Invisible as it is, nevertheless, love is still the engine of the Christian life. Love is often glazed over, or sugar coated by more currant and interesting concepts, and pushed to the back of our minds and experience, but high and low, deep and shallow, love remains the engine of human existence.

“This world was made by God, and the world did not know Him. Which world did not know Him? The lover of the world, the lover of the work, the scorner of the workman…Your love must migrate; cast off your moorings from creatures, moor yourself to the Creator. Change your love, change your fear; the only things that make good or bad lives are good or bad loves.” ( St. Augustine, sermon 313A)

If the people didn’t know or recognize God, then they did not know love, for, as the apostle John wrote, “God is love. . .We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:16 &19) Love has been the subject of literature, poetry, and songs since writing was invented, but the great declaration of love is still John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believed in Him, should not perish, but have eternal life.” Eternal life itself is powered by the love of God for His created people, an entirely sacrificial love that transforms the meaning of humanlife and empowers us as humans to share God’s divine life. On his resurrection Jesus called his disciples “brothers,” sharing his own unique relationship to God with human beings who loved him, but had not understood his loving purpose on earth.

Jesus’ mother Mary’s willing acceptance of the angel Gabriel’s message to her of God’s presence in her life and her role in His plan, the role that she “ treasured up and pondered in her heart,” (Luke2:19) was the key that turned the engine of love that she poured out to her infant son, in raising him to manhood.

St. Paul, who had once been a cold hearted witness to the murder of St. Steven, wrote some of the most exquisite passages about a love he himself experienced from the Spirit of the living Christ: If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal…And these remain: faith, hope and Love, but the greatest of these is love. (1Corinthians 13:3713) Love sometimes seems very hidden; but it is always the engine that keeps us in touch with the true love of God, the engine so strong that it delivers eternal life.

Love in Him

Prue