God Is Love - Beeldbibliotheek

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17. True, no one has ever seen God as he is. And yet God is not totally invisible to us; he does notremain completely inaccessible. God loved us first, says the Letter of John quoted above (cf.4:10), and this love of God has appeared in our midst. He has become visible in as much as he“has sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 Jn 4:9). God hasmade himself visible: in Jesus we are able to see the Father (cf. Jn 14:9). Indeed, God is visible ina number of ways. In the love-story recounted by the Bible, he comes towards us, he seeks to winour hearts, all the way to the Last Supper, to the piercing of his heart on the Cross, to hisappearances after the Resurrection and to the great deeds by which, through the activity of theApostles, he guided the nascent Church along its path. Nor has the Lord been absent fromsubsequent Church history: he encounters us ever anew, in the men and women who reflect hispresence, in his word, in the sacraments, and especially in the Eucharist. In the Church's Liturgy,in her prayer, in the living community of believers, we experience the love of God, we perceivehis presence and we thus learn to recognize that presence in our daily lives. He has loved us firstand he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us afeeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see andexperience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response withinus.In the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed that love is not merely asentiment. Sentiments come and go. A sentiment can be a marvellous first spark, but it is not thefullness of love. Earlier we spoke of the process of purification and maturation by which eroscomes fully into its own, becomes love in the full meaning of the word. It is characteristic ofmature love that it calls into play all man's potentialities; it engages the whole man, so to speak.Contact with the visible manifestations of God's love can awaken within us a feeling of joy bornof the experience of being loved. But this encounter also engages our will and our intellect.Acknowledgment of the living God is one path towards love, and the “yes” of our will to his willunites our intellect, will and sentiments in the all- embracing act of love. But this process isalways open-ended; love is never “finished” and complete; throughout life, it changes andmatures, and thus remains faithful to itself. Idem velle atque idem nolle 9 —to want the samething, and to reject the same thing—was recognized by antiquity as the authentic content of love:the one becomes similar to the other, and this leads to a community of will and thought. The lovestorybetween God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in acommunion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God's will increasingly coincide:God's will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by thecommandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact moredeeply present to me than I am to myself. 10 Then self- abandonment to God increases and Godbecomes our joy (cf. Ps 73 [72]:23-28).18. Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus.It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like oreven know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounterwhich has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on thisother person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ.
His friend is my friend. Going beyond exteriorappearances, I perceive in others an interior desire fora sign of love, of concern. This I can offer them notonly through the organizations intended for suchpurposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity.Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to othersmuch more than their outward necessities; I can givethem the look of love which they crave. Here we seethe necessary interplay between love of God and loveof neighbour which the First Letter of John speaks ofwith such insistence. If I have no contact whatsoeverwith God in my life, then I cannot see in the otheranything more than the other, and I am incapable ofseeing in him the image of God. But if in my life I failcompletely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be“devout” and to perform my “religious duties”, thenmy relationship with God will also grow arid. Itbecomes merely “proper”, but loveless. Only myreadiness to encounter my neighbour and to show himlove makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if Iserve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to whatGod does for me and how much he loves me. Thesaints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa ofCalcutta—constantly renewed their capacity for loveIn his first encyclical, Pope Benedict writes thatthe Eucharist draws believers into Christ's act ofself-sacrifice. Christ, the pope said, gives theultimate lesson in "love of neighbor." The papalletter , "Deus Caritas Est" ("God Is Love"), wasreleased Jan. 25 at the Vatican. (CNS photo)of neighbour from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounteracquired its real- ism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbour arethus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who hasloved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a “commandment” imposed from without andcalling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a lovewhich by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is“divine” because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makesus a “we” which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is “all in all” (1Cor 15:28).PART IICARITASTHE PRACTICE OF LOVEBY THE CHURCHAS A “COMMUNITY OF LOVE”The Church's charitable activity as a manifestation of Trinitarian love19. “If you see charity, you see the Trinity”, wrote Saint Augustine. 11 In the foregoing reflections,we have been able to focus our attention on the Pierced one (cf. Jn 19:37, Zech 12:10),
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Page 6 and 7: exodus out of the closed inward-loo
Page 8 and 9: The Prophets, particularly Hosea an
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