TO LOVE AS GOD TELLS US
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
June 07, 2020
I love pizza.
And I love summer.
And I love my family and friends.
And although I just used the same word in those
statements—“love”—that word doesn’t mean the same thing in any of them. Pizza
provides me with physical satisfaction. Summer provides me with opportunities
to be outside and active during longer days. But family and friends provide my
very life source, and I cling to that love even when it provides me with no
physical satisfaction or personal pleasure.
Anyone who has ever been a parent can understand far better
than I that you don’t stop loving a child when he/she disappoints you or even
angers you, or when the child ceases to be convenient to have around. And it’s
true on the other end as well: a healthy
child does not stop loving a parent when Mom or Dad grows old or weak or
forgetful or stubborn.
Oh, and I also love God—or at least I try hard to. And on
today’s annual feast day of the Most Holy Trinity, it is consoling to know that
that also is true on the other end: God loves me, and us—all of us—and the
world. And that love is not the kind that gets withdrawn when we human beings
fail to measure up to God’s expectations—which to be honest is most of the
time.
God doesn’t love us because we deserve that or because we’re
pleasant and devout and obedient enough servants. God’s love, to say it
bluntly, has little to do with us at all. Which is the best news of all because
it means we can’t mess it up from our side. God loves us and all the world
because he has to, and he has to because that’s who God is.
Sometimes it is said that there is nothing that God can’t do,
but that’s not completely true. There is one thing that even God cannot do, and
that is to be someone other than God, whose very being is self-emptying love.
That’s the faith that distinguishes Christians from every other religion in the
world. We confess that God’s very nature involves being a community of three,
whom we name Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Communal love. That’s God.
How can one be three and three be one? Many a boring theology
book has been written about that question, but in the end we don’t have to
diagram it or explain it. Nobody ever adequately explains God. We love God
because God has first loved us. But here’s the big difference in the use of
that word again—“love.” Once God decided to create us, God was and is required
to love us. It can’t be otherwise.
But on our side, we can choose not to respond in love. Even
though we are all created in God’s image, and have the ability to love one
another, we aren’t forced to—and haven’t we seen plenty enough evidence of that
this week. Even though we are made most happy and healthy when we live in to
love, we still can say no, whether by indifference or self-adsorption or
outright hatred toward other people.
Why would anybody choose to do that? Welcome to the mystery
of sin. And it is helped along by the misunderstanding of the word love. I will
stop “loving” pizza as soon as it stops pleasing my taste buds. And I will stop
loving summer when the dew point gets too high. But that isn’t really love in
the first place. That’s selfishness.
In that brief second reading today from St. Paul to the
Corinthians, he reminds them about the “love of God” and the “God of love.”
Those two words mean the same thing. And what does that godly love look like?
Paul tells us:
“Mend your ways, encourage one another, live in peace, greet one another with a
holy kiss.”
In other words, it looks like Jesus, who as John’s gospel
says today came to reveal what God is like, and how God feels about us—not
condemning, but saving us—if we are able to welcome that.
“God so loved the world that he gave us his only son…” That
word love, when it comes from God, means unlimited, unqualified, and
irrevocable—no matter how much we humans fail to respond. God’s love remains
even when we find it hard to see or understand, and even when we and our
communities suffer. And now we are suffering with pandemic and racism and
senseless violence and hateful rhetoric and blaming on all sides. We need
today’s liturgical remembrance of unstoppable communal love more than ever. The
Most Holy Trinity. The invitation to love will always remain.
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