Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.
D uring the early, heady days after the Second Vatican Council, Father Clarence River's hymn, God is Love came like a revelation to the high school seminary here at Mount Saint Francis. We knew our Baltimore Catechism well enough, and could sing the standard songs and recite the usual prayers of American Catholicism, but we were unaccustomed to the Gospel music of our African American brethren. We had not imagined a radical teaching like "God is love." Because it was new, and perhaps because love sounded like something worth investigating, we loved the song.
But secular forces were also powerful and Saint John's simple teaching could be misconstrued. Romantics fall in love with love and are inevitably disappointed; when did a romantic opera, play, or movie end happily ever after? And secular people wonder why we should love an all-powerful, all-wise, and entirely self-sufficient God who has no need for our love. Shouldn't our energies be directed at one another, and the improvement of the human lot?
Fortunately, the Spirit of God turns us toward the Apostle's teaching, "...everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God." Our experience of love begins with the Holy Spirit who directs our lives. As high school boys we had to discover within our original families, our religious education, and our seminary experience, the directing hand of God. Even as we cooperated with the daily Masses and prayers, sat patiently through the friars' sermons, and applied ourselves to the studies, we had to see the face of a loving Father.
We had to learn the art of abiding in God's love. Having found the place where love abides, we should learn to stay there even as we encountered all the disturbances and upheavals of teenage boys in the tumultuous sixties and seventies. It takes a lifetime to learn all this, and in the end I know so little about it.
We learn that God is Love through the routines of daily prayer, but we also learn it as we return to that sacred place after wandering far from it. Everyone has said, "Okay! I've got it God, I can take it from here!" And fallen hard on our faces. It takes a long time to learn that I must turn back to the Lord every day, and many times a day; and especially when my routine prayers become routine.
On this seventh day of the new year, a Tuesday like thousands of others, it's good to hear, as Father River sang, that "God is Love, and he who abides in love, abides in God, and God in him."
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I love to write. This blog helps me to meditate on the Word of God, and I hope to make some contribution to our contemplations of God's Mighty Works.
Ordinarily, I write these reflections two or three weeks in advance of their publication. I do not intend to comment on current events.
I understand many people prefer gender-neutral references to "God." I don't disagree with them but find that language impersonal, unappealing and tasteless. When I refer to "God" I think of the One whom Jesus called "Abba" and "Father", and I would not attempt to improve on Jesus' language.
You're welcome to add a thought or raise a question.