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   It has been said that “love makes the world go around.” If love is confused with the sexual instinct, then, if course, this is what keeps the human race going, generation after generation. But this is not the love which is the subject of today’s epistle. Love as instinct is quite different from loving in deed and in truth. Love in this latter sense has been extolled by St. Paul in a famous passage:

Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful;
it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its
own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not
rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears
all things, believes all thing, hopes all things, endures
all things. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7

If love in the Christian sense must be distinguisbed from the sexual instinct, so too must it be distinguished from merely external action. When John urges us to love “in deed,” he is not saying that love is the deed. A starving child may not care about the motive behind the life-giving gift of food, but from the viewpoint of Christian ethics, this motive makes all the difference.

In that same passage from St. Paul, the apostle declares that if someone gives away everything he has, but without love, the external gift brings no gain to the giver (v.3). Christian love is based on knowledge, the knowledge that Christ laid down his life for us (1John 4:10). That is why Christian love can lead a person so far as to lay down his life for another (John 15:13).

But even in this case the external act is nothing apart from the love that prompts it. It has been said that the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference, for example, indifference to another’s need:

Whose hath this world’s goods, and seeth his brother have need,
and shutteth up his heart against him, how dwelleth the love of
God in him? 1 John 3:17

The gospel tells us a parable about indiferences towards God. The Parable of the Great Supper (Luke 14:15-24) is about an invitation to the kingdom of God and the excuses the people find not to accept this invitation: property, business, marriage. All these are perfectly legitimate concerns, but it is tragic if they keep up from the one thing that is necessary: our union with God.

What we need to have is a right sense of priorities. Without this it is only too understandable that we would prefer a day at the beach or on the golf links to attendance at church. Our Christian eucharist is “a great supper,” which prefigures the Messianic banquet in the kingdom of God. But how easy it is to find excuses to turn down the invitation, and God may not give us a rain check.

Divine grace is free, but it is not cheap. May each of us be found ready to answer the call.

June 05, 2005

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