There is a foundational aspect to the line of the Little Mandate [1] Love…..love…..love, never counting the cost., we will now reflect upon for it is rooted in both the Great Commandment [Mt. 22:35-40; Mk. 12:28-34; Lk. 10:27] and in Jesus’ further teaching on love: “…. I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” [Jn. 13:34,35]
In some
respects, love is a translucent reality, with a type of fragility about it
because we are emotional beings, prone to misunderstandings and snap judgements
if we experience other failing to respond to us the way we truly need or simply
want.
In
other respects, love, not the emotional aspect but the cause of our existence,
the purpose of our lives, in a most sacred way through baptism, is a foundational
reality.
Love
and pain are inseparable as constitutive of our lives because while we hunger,
and rightly so, to be beloved, and we are because Love Himself, the Holy
Trinity, has created us as beloved persons, we keep tripping over the complex aspects
of ‘human’ love: eros and philos, and the challenges of living out, by first
accepting it, agape.
Eros is
highly emotional and physical as it is romantic love, but often the love aspect
gets trampled on by sheer lust and becomes demanding ‘love’, which is not
authentic love at all. Philos is mostly authentic love of deep friendships, a
treasured experience in anyone’s life and while it too can become demanding of
other, usually is mutually kind and somewhat selfless.
Only
agape, because it is the love of God poured into us, unconditionally, and the
way we are called to love one another and self, is the experience of the pure
reality of love, which love is always self-gift without any insistence that we
be beloved from other in return.
Unfortunately,
it is only in the Greek that Jesus’s triple ask of Peter if he loves Jesus is
clear, so here the Greek is inserted in italics: When they had finished
breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you agape
Me more than these? He said to Him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I philos
You.” He said to him, “Feed My lambs.” He then said to him a second time,
“Simon, son of John, do you agape Me?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord, you
know that I philos You.” He said to him, “Tend My sheep.” He said to him
the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you agape Me?” Peter was
distressed that He had said to him a third time, “Do you agape Me?” and
he said to Him, “Lord, You know everything; You know that I philos You.”
Jesus said to him, “Feed My sheep. [Jn.21:15-17]
By the
time the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles Peter would grow from philos
love to agape love to the point of that no greater agape than to embrace
martyrdom for Christ.
The
commandment laid down in the New Testament demands from man love for others,
for his neighbours – in the fullest sense, then, love for persons. For God,
whom the commandment to
love
names first, is the most perfect personal Being. [2] Within the agape of sacramental
marriage the desire and act of eros – if self-gift dominates all aspects of the
desire and act – becomes purified of lust and thus the marriage bed becomes a
type of altar where the self-sacrifice of spousal self-gift is offered as holy
oblation.
Aided
by the Most Holy Spirit we can not only love others and self as Jesus, the
Father, the Holy Spirit love us, unconditionally, but also embrace the struggle
and cross of loving without counting the cost. No easy task that, but it
is when we forego counting the cost that the emotional component is purified
and loving, that is agape-unconditional-self giving to other loving, becomes
true joy, joy whose origin is the Holy Spirit’s gift to us.
The key
to the grace, indeed the mystery, of actually loving as Christ does, without
counting the cost, is to take up, as faithful disciples of Christ, our shared
carrying of His Cross, that is to carry our cross of which the transverse beam
is our very selves, the beam which stretches from horizon of our birth to
horizon of our earthly death, pierces through the veil between time and
eternity, and the upright beam, divine
ladder which enables us to move upward from being, as it were, planted on the
earth, through every stages of our life, the lives of the human family whom we
love, serve, pray for, right to were we are stretched out, crucified, face to
face, eye to eye with the Crucified One Himself, Our Beloved, in whose arms we
shall die and be lifted up with Him, by Him, through Him, into the heart of the
Holy Trinity.
One way
to understand this, appreciate it with joy and trust, is to stand contemplating
Jesus on the Cross, arms outstretched, cruciform.
This is
the month of March, traditionally, as is each Wednesday, dedicated to St.
Joseph, whom Pope Francis speaks eloquently about in PATRIS CORDE [3], and
therein gives us examples of loving without counting the cost we can surely
imitate as we strive to live out the LITTLE MANDATE.
Pope
Francis begins by asserting St. Joseph loved WITH A FATHER’S HEART…….that
he had courage to become Jesus’ legal father, indeed St. John Paul calls St.
Joseph the Custodian, thus the protector, of the Redeemer.
The
following are words by Pope Francis about St. Joseph revealing how St. Joseph
is the model of loving authentically, like Christ, like Our Blessed Mother,
without counting the cost:…..He turned his vocation to domestic love into a
superhuman oblation of himself, his heart, and all his abilities……Even through
Joseph’s fears, God’s will, His history and His plan were at work. Joseph,
then, teaches us that faith in God includes believing that He can work even
through our fears, our frailties, our weaknesses…..In every situation, Joseph
declared his own “fiat”, like those of Mary at the Annunciation and Jesus in
the Garden of Gethsemane…… We should always consider whether we
ourselves are protecting Jesus and Mary, for they are also mysteriously
entrusted to our own responsibility, care and safekeeping. The Son of the
Almighty came into our world in a state of great vulnerability. He needed to be
defended, protected, cared for and raised by Joseph. God trusted Joseph, as did
Mary, who found in him someone who would not only save her life, but would
always provide for her and her child. In this sense, Saint Joseph could not be
other than the Guardian of the Church, for the Church is the continuation of
the Body of Christ in history, even as Mary’s motherhood is reflected in the
motherhood of the Church. In his continued protection of the Church, Joseph
continues to protect the child and his mother, and we too, by our love for the
Church, continue to love the child and his mother…..Joseph acted as a father
for his whole life. Fathers are not born, but made. A man does not become a
father simply by bringing a child into the world, but by taking up the
responsibility to care for that child. Whenever a man accepts responsibility
for the life of another, in some way he becomes a father to that person……Joseph
found happiness not in mere self-sacrifice but in self-gift. In him, we never
see frustration but only trust. His patient silence was the prelude to concrete
expressions of trust. Our world today needs fathers. It has no use for tyrants
who would domineer others as a means of compensating for their own needs. It
rejects those who confuse authority with authoritarianism, service with
servility, discussion with oppression, charity with a welfare mentality, power
with destruction. Every true vocation is born of the gift of oneself, which is
the fruit of mature sacrifice. The priesthood and consecrated life likewise
require this kind of maturity. Whatever our vocation, whether to marriage,
celibacy or virginity, our gift of self will not come to fulfilment if it stops
at sacrifice; were that the case, instead of becoming a sign of the beauty and
joy of love, the gift of self would risk being an expression of unhappiness,
sadness and frustration…..We need only ask Saint Joseph for the grace of
graces: our conversion.
Let us
now make our prayer to him: Hail, Guardian of the Redeemer, Spouse of the
Blessed Virgin Mary. To you God entrusted his only Son; in you Mary placed her
trust; with you Christ became man. Blessed Joseph, to us too, show yourself a
father and guide us in the path of life. Obtain for us grace, mercy and
courage, and defend us from every evil. Amen.
[1] http://www.madonnahouse.org/mandate/
[2]
LOVE AND RESPONSIBILITY, Karol Wojtyla [John Paul II]; p.40; William Collins
Sons & Co. Ltd, 1981 ~ italics are mine
[3] http://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco-lettera-ap_20201208_patris-corde.html
Italics are mine
© 2021
Fr. Arthur Joseph
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