In a World of Half Loves

In Benedict XVI timely new encyclical Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”) he explores how the misunderstanding and/or rejection of true love have created enormous damage to the human’s true vocation. In number six of the first part titled “The Unity of Love in Creation and in Salvation History” the Holy Father proclaims “searching” love . . .which involves a real discovery of the other, moving beyond the selfish character. . . Love now becomes concern and care for the other. No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of the happiness; instead it seeks to good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.”

Sacrificial love, love not goaled in, “a sinking in the intoxication of the happiness,” reveals the substance of the love. It is the land one learns to walk into and stand on in a journey of becoming more than one thought they could ever be. There have never been substitutes for the real thing, because nothing than the original satisfies once it has been realized. To love as God does isn’t really giving up of self, it is sacrifice in its’ true sense by “giving into” the original intent that the self was molded for: “the good of the beloved.” Sacrifice is then necessary to finding the true nature of love, it becomes not only bearable, but fulfilling because the goal of Godly love is reward in full. God DOES and CAN move us beyond our limits of self absorption and, in a turn of events, brings us into His “self absorption” that brings life. He draws us out of us, which left unmoved like a stream, which if not continual infused with Him, will poison. He knows we can not be left to ourselves, and will draw us into His flowing living waters: Himself.

This healthy sacrifice on the way to love should bring us to our knees, because that is the best human posture for “a real discovery of the other.” Our attention must be continually refocused off of ourselves; Christ in washing the feet of His disciples knew this in teaching us “the vocabulary of love.” As humans, what has been passed down, experienced, and participated in, creates our “vocabulary in love,” which is complete or not. That is why the Church is so important in bring us back to “ourselves” based on the Lover and not relying on “personal experience,” but a collective away from self that leaves room for God to be heard. The greater sin distorts love within us and culture, the greater the Church, with each other, is needed to heal into having a correct vocabulary for love.

We are ever increasingly bogged down in false vocabulary where only a gleam of the Word has been taken in. From this we have produced a world of half loves, for the fruit it produces is very bitter indeed. God is Love, and His love brings life, this has always been the orthodox Christian testing of its’ true nature. To the core that is what God is, Love that brings Life. When love doesn’t bring life something is misplaced in an attempt to live it. It is a daily decision and struggle for the Christian to consciously be brave enough to embrace the full and awesome reality of Love that God has for us or its’ halves we are tempted to settle for. Once divided, away from the source, these halves will continue into smaller and warped versions of the real thing. The sacrifice of continually embracing Love in its fullness and not settling for the pieces is not easy. This however, is the sacrifice in taking the quickest road to God and ourselves.