OUR LOVE FOR GOD

6TH DAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF CHRISTMAS

1 Jn 2:12-17; Ps 96:7-10; Lk 2:36-40

The Love for God and love for the World

As we mentioned on the feast day of John the Evangelist, John offers us the impossible and provides us with the means of accomplishing it. He gradually leads us through the means or way to the impossible end. We considered lowliness or humility as a common feature of those who received the revelation of God’s Son in human nature first. John gives us even a more fundamental feature common to these people. Their common love for God is also a condition for seeing what cannot be seen but exists from the beginning. Our love and its accompanying expression in our desires colour and motivate everything we do. Hence, Saint John divides the people into two sets or groups based on their love. From his awesome statement that God is love, which is the bedrock of his theology and the interpretative framework for his Gospel and epistles, we have already understood the natural foundation of love within each person as a creature of God who is love. So, love is native to us, who are made rational in the image of God. God naturally equipped us to receive love communications. Saint John’s presentation of love as a means of arriving at the impossible is therefore natural for us. That which existed from the beginning remains impossible to us if we proceed by any means that is not connatural or commensurate to God.    

Subsequently, Saint John makes a distinction between genuine love and the counterfeit of love, which drives many people. His division of people into two sets or groups is also based on this distinction between genuine and counterfeit love. All those who proceed by the counterfeit love will never arrive at the proposed or revealed end, because there is no path leading a person to the impossible end; that is, there is no hunger of God in the souls that love creatures for their own sake. “I have written to you, children, because you already know the Father; I have written to you, fathers, because you have come to know the one who has existed since the beginning; I have written to you, young men, because you are strong and God’s word has made its home in you, and you have overcome the Evil One.” Saint John writes to us because he believes that we already walk the means or the right path to what is impossible to the mere senses. What makes it impossible for sensual people to receive or commune with the One from the beginning is what he expressed next. “You must not love this passing world or anything that is in the world. The love of the Father cannot be in any man who loves the world, because nothing the world has to offer—the sensual body, the lustful eye, pride in possession—could ever come from the Father but only from the world.” Thus, the only people who can touch, see, feel, and interact or commune with the One who existed from the beginning are those who walk by the path of love of God.

Therefore, our love determines what we see, hear, touch, and interact with or commune with. The love of God enables us to see the Eternal Word in our human nature. The Gospel illustrates this conclusion for us. Among the priestly class, the old and upright Simeon was able to see the Child Jesus when the parents brought him into the Temple and spoke about him as someone familiar to him. Among the prophets, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, was able to recognise the One who existed from the beginning and spoke about him as a close friend. Her manner of life is described for us as follows. “She was well on in years. Her days of girlhood over, she had been married for seven years before becoming a widow. She was now eighty-four years old and never left the Temple, serving God night and day with fasting and prayer.” Her ability to see the Eternal Word is what is described for us: “She came by just at that moment and began to praise God; and she spoke of the child to all who looked forward to the deliverance of Jerusalem.” Love of God is the sure means to reach what is impossible to our senses. We must never travel by the way of the senses, which leads to darkness and into the region of evil and death. We must travel rather by the way of the word of God, by which we defeat the Evil One and overcome the world. This path leads from our earth to the heaven of God; the path is located within our human nature and illuminated by the Incarnation of the Word. “Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad.”

Let us pray: Grant, we pray, almighty God, that the newness of the Nativity in the flesh of your Only Begotten son may set us free, for ancient servitude holds us bound beneath the yoke of sin. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.