Lectio
“Eternal Beauty!… You act as if You could not live without Your creature, even though You are Life itself, and everything has its life from You and nothing can live without You. Why then are you so mad? Because You have fallen madly in love with what You have made!”
— Catherine of Siena
Meditatio
Somewhere along the way, we came to believe that the things we think, do, or say are enough to make God stop loving us — that we are somehow capable of making God, the God who is love (1 John 4:8), withdraw His love from us. We started believing that God punishes us for turning away from Him, as if our turning away from love were not punishment enough — as if alienating ourselves from the very love that created us, sustains us, and desires nothing more than to be with us for all of eternity is not punishment enough.
What if we’ve got it all wrong? What if God does not punish us at all? What if our exile is of our own making and hell is merely a choice to live without love? And what if, by committing to this choice consistently enough for long enough, with no desire to turn back toward love, a loveless existence — this hell described as an outer darkness, an unquenchable fire, a worm that will not die, and by which we will weep and gnash our teeth — becomes our eternal fate, a fate to which we have willingly and willfully condemned ourselves? What if all God ever wanted and ever asked of us was to turn toward love, and to never look back, but we even turned this commandment into our own self-chosen condemnation?
Did not God love us so much that He gave His only Son to live with us, to live as us, to teach us how to live and love as God, and to pour himself out in love for us on the cross (John 3:16)? Did not Jesus teach us to love everyone, even our enemies (Matthew 5:44), and to forgive all who wrong us — saying, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34)? In other words, the love Jesus has shown us, which is the same love he asks of us, is the love of the Father, for “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). In Jesus, we are shown that God’s love is a love that loves everyone and pours itself out for everyone, even those who have chosen enmity with Love, who reject or persecute love, and who crucify love.
If Jesus is God — not merely God’s messenger, but God’s own self-disclosure in human flesh — then what Jesus does, God does. When Jesus tells us to forgive “seventy times seven times” (Matthew 18:22), he is not giving us a standard higher than God’s own. He is showing us the face of the Father. When Jesus sacrifices himself for us and gives up his life for us, even when we did not and do not deserve it, he is showing us that this is how God loves us. He pours himself out and never stops — this kenosis, this death and resurrection, is not a single event but the eternal shape of divine love itself, always emptying, always rising, always given again.
It is not, therefore, that God condemns us for our sins, but rather that we choose to allow ourselves to be condemned by our refusal to love, and our refusal to receive His love, eternally and freely offered. God is not asking for our perfection in thoughts, words, and deeds, although this is an ideal for which we should pray and strive — “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) — but to be perfect in love, both in our willingness to consent to it and receive it, and in our willingness to offer it, because “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).
Oratio
lord break bread with me
teach me to do the same
for others
excluding no one
from this table
set before me
in love
remind me, lord
that none of this
belongs to me
none of this do I deserve
how then
could I keep it to myself
except by the hardness of my heart
help me, lord
to love as perfectly as you love
to pour myself out
holding nothing in reserve
to be the bread and the blood of love
unto all whom you send my way
Contemplatio
Where in your life are you choosing the hardness of your own heart over the love that is already, always, being offered to you?
Related Scripture
“Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency.”
— Micah 7:18 (NRSVCE)
For Further Reading
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like Already Loved: How God’s Infinite Love Calls Us to Love in Return, which explores the great commandment not as obligation but as our free and joyful response to a love that has already claimed us.
Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity.
Wrestling With God.
Returning To Love.
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