Fraternal Charity
“On the subject of fraternal charity
you have no need for anyone to write you,
for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.”1 Thes. 4:9
Love, love, love. It seems like it’s all we have been hearing in the readings. Maybe because it is really all that we need! It is so simple yet to difficult to practice. I think we have all experienced the pain of loving and the pain of not being loved. Loving someone requires sacrifice, and oftentimes sacrifice comes with suffering and pain. In the Gospels we sometimes hear that Jesus was “grieved” or that He was “moved with pity” or “full of compassion.” These are all motivated by love or charity. (Charity comes from the Latin word caritas, meaning “love,” but the kind that is of God.) In his letter to the Thessalonians, St. Paul tells the people that they themselves “have been taught by God to love one another.” It is in our very being and nature to love. Why? Because we are the product of Love. We were created out of love, with love, and for love. We exist because God loves us, and God loves us because God is Love. Hence, there is no course or class on “love.” Love cannot be taught or learned in the classrooms or lecture halls. Love must be received, experienced, and given.
But we all know it is not easy to love. For some people they express their love by buying people things and for others it is by spending time with them. There are so many ways of expressing one’s love, but there is only one source of love and that is God. What am I trying to say? I am trying to say that in all the ways that we choose to love, its root must be in God. Our love must be anchored in Christ because only then will it be real love, and only real love can bear fruit. Think about this for a second: true love never changes but yet it may cause change in people’s hearts and lives, while “fake” love changes when this “love” is no longer reciprocated. Only that which does not change can cause change, and change for the good.
St. Augustine, the great bishop and doctor of the Church famously said, “Late have I loved you, oh beauty ever ancient, ever new.” Just yesterday we celebrated his mother, St. Monica who prayed unceasingly for Augustine’s conversion. That is the fruit of love: conversion. And notice that this fruit of love was not for Monica but rather for Augustine. True love, caritas, is always willed for the good of the other. We love because we have first been loved. “I have loved you with an everlasting love” God says through the Prophet Jeremiah. Everlasting means that this love has no end, but it also has no beginning. There was never a point in time when God did not love us. Isn’t that amazing? St. Augustine recognized this in his conversion when he exclaimed, “Late have I loved you” and who is this “you?” It is “Beauty” — God, who is ever ancient and ever new, who was, is and will continue to be, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Luckily for us, it is never too late for us to love God.
May we take a few moments today to thank the Lord for His love for us, and may we ask Him through the intercession of St. Augustine and St. Monica to give us the grace, desire, and courage to not only receive His love but also to live out this love, this Love who is God Himself.
