Just before the New Year began, a kind-hearted soul gently left on the doorstep to my room a chocolate wrapping paper that previously had adorned a small, yet delightful, chocolate bar. The quote inscribed on it ran thus 'Love is a force that overcomes all obstactles'. Its author was one of the most important Church Fathers, theologians and philosophers in Western Christianity: St Augustine of Hippo.
To what kind of love is Augustine referring? The great Bishop of Hippo interconnects love with truth. In his Sermon on 1 John 4:4-12, Augustine explains that an action is the result of love if it is grounded in love, which is the truth. Even if, at times, truth tastes sour, its healing consequences are there for all to see, to cherish and to be restored by in return.
"This is what I insist upon: human actions can only be understood by their root in love. All kinds of actions might appear good without proceeding from the root of love. Remember, thorns also have flowers: some actions seem truly savage, but are done for the sake of discipline motivated by love. Once and for all, I give you this one short command: love, and do what you will. If you hold your peace, hold your peace out of love. If you cry out, cry out in love. If you correct someone, correct them out of love. If you spare them, spare them out of love. Let the root of love be in you: nothing can spring from it but good."
For Augustine, truth manifested itself in the actions that outrightly show its essence. This great Bishop firmly believed that "a man is what he loves". As he rightly said to Fabius, the Roman officer who in the film about his life is deeply in love with Augustine's niece: "If you love the earth, you will be of the earth. If you love God, you will be of God". So in this homily on 1 John 4, love becomes enfleshed in the actions one chooses to perform.
"If you would see God, here is what you should imagine: God is love. What sort of face does love have? What shape is it? What size? What hands and feet does it have? No one can say. And yet it does have feet, those feet that carry people to church. It does have hands, those hands that reach out to the poor. It has eyes, those through which we consider the needy: 'blessed is the person,' it is said, 'who considers the needy and the poor.' [Ps. 41:1] It has ears, of which the Lord says, 'He that has ears to hear, let him hear.' [Luke 8:8]".
In Augustine's view, love - the highest of the virtues - demands from us that we order our loves. God is the apex of our loves. If, for instance, we put the good of physical beauty at the top of our loves, we fool ourselves and finish up being harmed by it.
In the City of God Augustine writes: "Now physical beauty, to be sure, is a good created by God, but it is a temporal good, very low on the scale of goods; and if it is loved in preference to God, the eternal, internal, and sempiternal Good, that love is as wrong as the miser's love for gold, with the abandonment of justice, though the fault is in the man, not in the gold. This is true of everything created; though it is good, it can be loved in the right way or in the wrong way - in the right way, that is, when the proper order is kept, in the wrong way when that order is upset" (City of God, XV.22)
Learning how to love appropriately and gladly appreciate the things God lovingly created for us should be our main goal for this new year. With Augustine, you and I should humbly and daily pray:
"Set love in order in me." (City of God, XV.22). "O Love ever burning, never quenched! O Charity, my God, set me on fire with your love! You command me to be continent. Give me the grace to do as you command, and command me to do what you will!" (Confessions, X.29). Amen.
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap