Love is for Life: Pastoral Letter of the Irish Bishops
PART I‹God's Plan For Love
(3.) LOVE COMES FROM GOD
15. It is a striking characteristic of human love that it spontaneously
uses a religious kind of language. In all cultures, the language of human
love and the language of prayer and of mysticism have been closely related.
Even in a culture so secular as modern Western culture, the language of
love, in literature, in poetry and in popular song, is still the language
of worship, adoration, divinity, ecstasy, everlastingness, eternity. A further
characteristic of love is that it is instinctively experienced as pure and
as purifying, as ennobling those united by it. People in love feel that
they are being brought close to God by their love. This remains true even
when the love is objectively sinful and shameful. In some confused way even
then the love is often experienced as uplifting. Wrongfulness in sexual
relationships often, to quote the words of a modern writer, "starts
from an innocence". This is a sign that love in its original nature,
as it came from the loving heart of the Creator, was created good and pure
and lovely; and that it still retains some trace of this holy origin even
when it is spoiled by human sin. This is important to remember; because
people sometimes say that their love must be holy because it feels holy.
Instead, the truth is that we have a duty to keep love true to its original
holiness by respecting God's law of love.
16. The greatest light on human love that history has ever known comes
from God's revelation in Christ. Jesus shows us that human love has its
source in God. It comes from the love of God the Father for His beloved
Son in the communion of the Holy Spirit. Not only does love come from God;
God himself is love. It is St John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, who tells
us: "God is love". These words sum up all that God reveals to
us about Himself . Creation is God's love made visible to us. It
was from love that He made the world. It is out of love that He continues
to care for it. It is in love that God looks on all that he has made. The
creation of man is a special act of God's love. God created man out of love.
He created man for love. Everything that is in the world is there because
God loves us and wants our love.
17. The story of salvation is a story of God's love for men.
St Paul calls it "the mystery of God's purpose", God's "hidden
plan" (Ephesians 1:9). St Paul marvels at "the breadth
and length and height and depth" of God's love (Ephesians 3:18).
The unimaginable love of God takes on a human body and a human face in Jesus
Christ. Jesus is God's love made flesh and dwelling amongst us. He is God's
infinite love "given up" for us in the foolishness of the Cross.
If we ask, with Mother Julian of Norwich, what was God's meaning in creating
and in redeeming the world, we can only answer with her: "Love was
His meaning" .
18. Love is God's inner life in the mystery of the Three Persons of the
Most Blessed Trinity. Love is God's power and activity, His plan and purpose
in creating and redeeming the world. Because God is infinite He can keep
pouring out love and compassion, mercy and forgiveness, without end and
without limit, for ever and ever. No matter what we do, we cannot stop God
loving us. There is no end to God's love for us. The truest picture we can
have of it is Christ crucified: God's indomitable love for us spoken between
agonising gasps and burning thirst on a cross.
Net publishing courtesy of the Newman Center at Caltech
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