BORN OF GOD: LESSONS FROM ST. JOHN (PART 5)

“Beloved let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 St. John 4:7-12).

As the children of God, the most deeply held thing we all share is the friendship we share with God the Trinity. It is our common home and thus all who call it home find there an untold multitude of brothers and sisters. The house of God is founded upon the unity of God the Trinity and this unity is the mission of God in us as the communion of saints. The thing we call salvation, the work of God’s grace in us unto everlasting life, is not something that is accomplished in isolation of all other of those who are being saved or the world that is being redeemed. This is what the Scriptures mean when they refer to the ‘fruit’ of grace at work in us. Love is the life of God the Trinity. Love is the proper life of humans made in His image. 

Yet this word ‘love’ is terribly strained in our time. It has come to mean so many different and contradictory things. St. John comes to our rescue to disabuse us of the counterfeit notions of love by pointing us to the pattern of love in Jesus Christ. “In this the love of God was revealed among us, that God sent His Son that we might live through Him.” The love of God is one of perfect gift and goodwill. This immediately sets God’s love apart from all other notions of love. God lives in perfect fullness--He needs nothing, He did not create the world or anything in it out of a desperate need for helpers or for servants or for playthings. Out of the fullness of the loving communion of the Trinity comes Creation, apparently because it is God’s delight to create and the natural fruit of loving communion. 

We see this stamped on creation through God’s icons in this world, human beings. We might look to the pattern of the union of the family. The gift of a whole self made by a husband to a wife and wife to husband brings forth new life that is their likeness, sharing in their life yet being distinct from them. We might see this in another case in the example of an artist, a person who gives the means of their life, time and energy, pain and joy, to bring forth a work of beauty that inspires and invigorates the lives of those who experience it. It is like a musician who adds to technical skill the gift of their heart, the cradle of their life. The music of such a person acts as a window between heaven and earth, and we experience a breath of eternal life as our time stops and we are their music while their music lasts. Life-giving and life-making love is the pattern of God’s love. 

This love stands in contrast to another kind of love that acts out of a need to be needed, a desire to cover up or seal away some interior emptiness. This is love touched by the darkness, a love that entices us to author our own little world that we might finally feel in control and maybe finally able to feel complete. Yet this was never our purpose. God knows in Himself nothing of this kind of love. Life abounds in the Trinity because love abounds in the Trinity in a ceaseless communion of the Father giving to the Son and the Son giving to the Father and the Spirit being the loving union between them. That is the life to which we are called to grow into forever. It is necessary here, though, to remember that we are creatures and not God, and so our loves will always possess some degree of need. The transformation we come to know in the Christian life, though, so orders our loves that the desperate need driven by shame and fear is quieted even as a humble and hopeful need replaces it: the need of a sophisticated adult to take command of their own life becomes again the need of a hopeful child who looks to their parent for provision. 

For now, though, our hearts remain restless. This restlessness of heart can be the occasion for us to turn to others and the world in a desperate attempt to use them to make ourselves feel whole, a habit that will always ultimately disappoint and leave us feeling empty. But it can also be the occasion for us to turn to God and to receive the light, life, and love that will quiet our hearts and enable us to then pour out gift-love to our fellow family members of God’s house and then to the world. God has made us for Himself, says St. Augustine, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. To this end Lent is a gift that helps us to name and understand our loves. But this process requires first that we feel the restlessness that may drive, to any extent, the loves we have for God and others and the world. At the outset, this always feels somewhat painful as through fasting and simplicity and silence during Lent we come into contact with the experiences of craving, of ambition, and of noise. Lent tells us to say ‘no’ to these things not as a flat prohibition but so that we may have the chance to see beneath them. 

If we answer every craving with yes, it goes its merry way, that is, until it wants more soon after. But if we answer craving with no, we allow it to pain us even as through that discomfort we can see what motivates that hunger, that want. Then we become more ready to pray for our daily bread, because then we know where God must meet us and we can name the place into which we invite God’s love to make whole and strong what is frail and lacking. The wholeness we receive through grace over time is the foundation of the love we then show others. It changes the whole character of our love when our love is transformed from desperate need to that of courageous gift. And this transformation has a tangible quality to it, and it becomes a living testimony to those who witness it. This is the great gift of the Church to the world, and is the heart of the Gospel. God is a good God who has provided the means of friendship between humanity and Himself forever. This communion, once entered, transforms all those who partake of it and binds them as a family. This loving communion of God’s family becomes a powerful counterpoint to the counterfeit loves of the world, which cry and make spectacle of themselves, which defensively war against the peaceful love of God yet never overcome it. The love of God transforms each of us, then all of us, and then the world.