Dear Group Leaders and Friends in Christian Meditation,
This August I am planning to take part in a retreat with our Chicagoland Christian meditators. When I was asked to participate in this, I knew immediately what the theme would be for this weekend: Love. It seems clear that in this time of disruption and division, we might need love more than ever. I am not really thinking of rom.com love, but I do like romantic comedy. I am speaking of the love that flows from a relationship with our God who is love itself.
When I was an active priest, I frequently spoke about the kinds of love that were in the Greek speaking world at the time of the early church. The Gospels were first recorded in the Greek language when they were put into writing after years of being an oral tradition. We have one word “love” that covers everything from loving the dinner that I had last night–to the love shared between two beloveds at the death of one of the lovers. Love covers a lot of territory of our lives.
There are three words for love in Greek that I would speak of during wedding homilies. Eros might be described as passionate love. Hopefully we have all experienced eros in our lives. We need eros as the power of attraction. It is quite sad when couples lose that first sense of irresistible attraction. Now of course, we need to go beyond eros and yet not lose it.
The next Greek love that I would speak of in a wedding homily is philia, friendship love. Now in the world of social media the word “friend” has been disintegrated in some ways. I have many “friends” on social media, but many I don’t know or are from school or parish connections that are more memories than active friendship. I learned the hard lessons of friendship when I was no longer a Catholic priest. True friends are those people who are with us in the good times and bad. Friendship is an important way to love and to make our world a better place. Philia is the arena of friends and lovers. It is this friendship that sustains us in our love. Jesus said, I no longer call you slaves, but I call you friends.
The love that we strive for is agape. The simplest way that I can think of agape as love is self-offering. It is the love that Jesus has modeled for us. Jesus calls us to love God and neighbor and to love our enemies. He is calling us to this higher form of love. It is deep and significant, and it is hard. Pope Benedict the XVI described Jesus as the “incarnation of love.” Jesus is the enfleshment of the love that God has for each of us as his unique children. Father John Main knew this from his own experience. He knew that we were to strive to be a community of love. For me, this is my desire as a Christian meditator to be an active, growing, passionate member of a community of love. Again, Pope Benedict reminded us that “Love is never ‘finished’.” That is the gift that I often see as a hospice chaplain. Even as people die and pass fully into the lap of God, our love for our beloveds isn’t ever finished and the love of our God is not finished either. As Hadewijch of Antwerp put it: “Love is everything.”
I have begun to study love as I prepare to share some thoughts on love in August. I have spent time reading a letter from Pope Benedict titled “God is Love.” I am now reading a book named “All About Love” by the educator and social critic, bell hooks. My next book is one by Andrew Harvey, a friend of the WCCM, on the topic of evolutionary love.
If you have any books on love that come to your mind, please let me know as I continue to learn about love in words and in life.
Warmly,
Kevin
