God is love, John tells us. Love one
another as I have loved you, Jesus says. Remain in my love, Jesus
tells us. And he promises that his joy will be in us and our joy
will be complete. When I read these two readings, I feel as though I
am entering a bottomless pit. The words are simple, but the more you
dwell on them, the less understanding. And probably the biggest
question is not what Jesus means by love, but whether we have the
love he is talking about.
God is love, for example. What comes
to your mind? I'll bet it's a man with a beard and a white gown
maybe smiling and holding out his arms? Or maybe it's Jesus inviting
us into paradise. But John did not say, “God has love” or “God
loves”. So how do we understand that God is love?
Love as someone said, is a verb, it is
not a thing. And the way to see that God is love is to remember that
God is Trinity, at least that's the best way we can understand what
we are talking about. Because the very essence of the Trinity has to
do with each person emptying himself out into the other, who in turn
empties himself out into the third, and so on. This giving one's
whole self to the other defines God; the whole giving of self defines
each person. You could say that the only difference between the
persons lies in their relationship to each other. And John tells us
in plain terms that God loved us first; love spills over from the
trinity and creates the universe.
Jesus further defines love: He in
fact is the definition of love, in that he gave himself up for us.
And he tells us that we will remain in his love as long as we keep
his commandments. And his commandment is “love one another”.
And I think we can probably conclude
that what Jesus is talking about, what John is talking about, has to
do with how much we give up ourselves. It is not a feeling, it is
not that we somehow equate praying and piety and good behavior with
loving. Not the same thing at all. And it isn't that we equate love
with good deeds. How are we giving ourselves up?
It's astounding, but God, the
Trinitarian God, wants the same relationship with you and I that
exists in the Trinity, a relationship in which there is mutual
emptying and filling up. C.S. Lewis was of the opinion that this
doesn't happen all at once or all the time. It is necessary each day
to offer yourself to God, but shortly afterward, we find we have
taken back what we offered. Over time if we persist, we do better at
letting go of ourselves, and to the extent that we make room, God can
work in us to put himself in the space we have made. God's love
consists of taking a creature with free will, you and I, with a
strong streak of selfishness, because we are bodies, because we
evolved this way, because we share that self-centeredness with all
conscious creatures – and transforming us into his Son.
CS Lewis says that this is a very hard
thing for a human being to do – not because it's hard to become
Jesus – it's impossible for you and I to accomplish. What makes it
so hard is that once we allow God to begin working on us, even a
little bit, our progress will do two things; first, it will make us
feel righteous, because perhaps we have conquered our anger, or
developed a little humility, or stopped abusing our spouses. Second,
there will be a point where we say, thank God, I've gotten rid of
those parts of my make up that are disturbing, negative, those things
that keep me from being good. Now, God, you can go work on someone
else, I'm done.
The point of course, is that God is
never done. Once you put yourself in his hands, once you allow him
to love you, he will not leave you alone – unless you break off
your relationship with him. So being loved by God, who is willing to
do all the work of love, is not easy.
But to the extent that you are loved
and return that love, as with God it will spill over, into acts of
love for your neighbor, and indeed acts of love for God. Those are
consequences.
Human beings by nature worry about
respect, freedom from pain and suffering, having enough “stuff”.
We are attracted to things that give us pleasure, sometimes to our
great detriment. And as long as these very natural inclinations
motivate our lives and actions, we will never be happy, we will never
have joy.
Our joy becomes complete when we
completely empty ourselves in love. Will we be able to do this
during this life? Probably not. If we are still motivated by those
natural inclincations, to that extent we will need further work by
God in us, and that is painful, and if it takes place after we die,
it is what we call purgatory. If on the other hand we act as though
we are motivated by love, over time, we will be. I think there's a
great insight in the Church's attitude to martyrdom, defined as being
put to death because of one's faith. If I die because I am a
Christian, even a very imperfect one, then I am giving up everything
for love of God. No wonder I am considered a saint, no wonder
everything is forgiven me. Love of God, love of neighbor, emptying
myself out for someone else, that is the goal. And every time we do
such a thing, even if it is small, we become a little more like God.
Jesus knows that true joy can fill us
to the extent that we are empty. We cannot bring about our own joy,
because we confuse joy with many other transitory emotions. But
Jesus tells us that he has the answer, that he wants to give us his
own joy, so that our joy may be complete.
So simple, yet so hard.
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