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A NEW commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. [Jn 13:34-35]

Artist: Victor Luciano Rebuffo

(1903-1983)

Buenos Aires, Argentina

LOVING HUMAN LOVE ^_[1]

MUCH DEEPER INSIGHT

1. In his book, CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE, Pope John Paul II recalled how he discovered a vital principle which guided him throughout the years of his priesthood:

LOVE IS not something that is learned, and yet there is nothing else as important to learn! As a young priest, I learned how to love human love.

THIS HAS been one of the fundamental themes of my priesthood--my ministry in the pulpit, in the confessional, and also in my writing. If one loves human love, there naturally arises the need to commit oneself completely to the service of fair love, because love is fair, it is beautiful.^[2]

2. At first glance, the Holy Father's expression learning how to love human love seems very simple, if not actually childlike. Yet, his meditation on love is the fruit of his priestly identity and practice and flows from his experience of prayer over the course of many years.

LOVE AS VIRTUE

3. Perhaps his reflection offers a much deeper insight than one would first imagine. What does loving human love mean? For our Divine Lesson today, we meditate on love as virtue, love as a sign of Christ, and love as man's destiny. St. Therese of Lisieux once remarked about love in much the same way. Before Therese entered the French Carmelite convent at the age of 16, April 09th, 1888, she was known simply as Therese Martin.

4. When she made her religious profession, however, she took the name: Sr. Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. Shortly before her death from tuberculosis at the age of 26 in 1897, Sr. Genevieve was caring for Therese in the convent infirmary.

FRUIT OF THE SAME VINE

5. Sr. Genevieve was actually Therese's blood sister. In fact, four Martin sisters and a cousin vowed the religious life and entered the Lisieux Convent as Carmelites. Sr. Genevieve writes: "The other day I was reading a passage on the happiness of heaven to my little patient, and she interrupted me, saying: 'That's not what attracts me...' 'What then?' I asked. 'Oh! It's Love! To love, to be loved, and to return to the earth to make love loved.'"^[3]

6. The Holy Father's words loving human love, and St. Therese's words to make love loved, are fruit of the same vine. But the question intensifies and refuses to go away. What do loving human love and making love loved mean?

VOCATION OF LOVING LOVE

7. Love is a virtue to be cherished, yet it is not a commodity. The more we pour love out, the more our heart overflows with it. The human heart is a vessel for bearing love, never a harness to restrain it. Love's full beauty reveals itself only when it is freely shared. To toil for it, or to attempt to earn it, is to diminish it.

8. And to demand love is to cause love to die. Love is whole and entire. It is not offered or received in pieces. Love is not nourished by promises and the imagination, but attains perfection by prolonged, self-effacing devotion. Taken for granted, it will languish and depart. Love is fed by love alone.

LOVE'S LANGUAGE

9. Love, more powerful than anyone who possesses or receives it, shuns provocation. Evil can be committed in the name of love, but love itself cannot be corrupted. Always sublime and unpretentious, love abhors manipulation, preferring to dwell in innocent hearts like those of children.

10. All human beings hunger for love, because the love in one's own heart cannot sustain him. We cannot survive without the love of others. Love is caught, but not captured, discerned but not mastered. Love is the language of selfless giving. Love repays itself.^[4]

WITNESSING LOVE

11. Love originates in God. All of its beauty, strength and endurance reflects the splendor of the Creator of All Things. What is man that God would give him a share in divine love? [cf. Psa 144:3] Love is at once our means and our end: Just as the human creature must submit to the divine Creator, the act of making love must yield to the act of witnessing love.

12. Witnessing love must ultimately surrender to the vocation of loving love. In this world all things are passing away yet three things abide: "Faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." [1Cor 13:13] Love is proven by deeds, not words. The person who loves as Christ loves is courteous, amiable and tender-hearted.

"IN LIKE"

13. Love, freed from self-interest and partiality, bestows serenity and forbearance upon the giver. Love, the sign of Christ, is good to all. [cf. Psa 145:8-9] Little children, perhaps more than any others, reveal the potential of human love and the necessity for its gentle, delicate stewardship. A little girl, replying to the question, "Have you ever been in love?", answered No, "but I've been in like."^[5]

14. What we experience now in our relationships with others offers us a glimpse of our future:

BELOVED, WE are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. [1Jn 3:2-3]

SUPERNATURAL END

15. The image of loving human love is astonishing. God calls us from sterile cliches to "make all things new" [Rev 21:5] to accept a revolutionary way of living. How much heartache must we endure before we recognize that love is more than a means or a method? How much personal suffering must we experience before we comprehend that love itself is our supernatural end?

16. When will we come to our senses? [cf. Lk 15:17] When will we realize that to love human love "without money and without price" [Isa 55:1] is to love the origin of love, God himself? We are "ambassadors for Christ" [2Cor 5:20] whose most excellent "ministry of reconciliation" [2Cor 5:18] is to make love loved, to bring people to Christ, to teach them to love Christ.

TO FIND YOURSELF

17. "Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God." [1Jn 4:7] To love love and to make love loved is to find yourself rather than to lose yourself. You awaken from the dead and return to life. Jesus, who beholds your distress and misfortune from a long way off, runs to embrace you on the road. By falling into his arms, you accept loves destiny.

18. Before you utter a word, he commands that heaven and earth prepare a feast of love in your honor. Holy Mother Church is itself the love of Christ manifested to all mankind. The Church prefigures the heavenly Jerusalem, "prepared as a bride adorned for her husband". [Rev 21:2] Christ, the groom, gives this commandment to his bride, the Church: that we love one another [cf. Jn 13:34] as Our Lord has loved us.

FOR ITS OWN SAKE

19. As you delight in your children or your grandchildren, when you feel joy at seeing young lovers walking hand in hand in the springtime, as you marvel at a husband and wife who look so much like one another after many years of marriage; when you glimpse the human heart in another person's eyes, while you laugh and share genuine friendship, take a few moments to think of love and to love it for its own sake. Nourish the love you see by the love in your own heart. Share the apostolate of love with God, and "rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!" [Phi 4:4]

^[1] Cycle A /Fifth Sunday of Easter / Acts 14:21-27 /Rev 21:1-5 /Jn 13:31-33, 34-35.

^[2] John Paul II, CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE, "Is There Really Hope in the Young?" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995) 122-123.

^[3] St. Therese of Lisieux, ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX: HER LAST CONVERSATIONS, ed. and trans. John Clarke OCD, (Washington, DC: ICS, 1977) 217.

^[4] Cf Naughty Marietta, comp. Victor Herbert. "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life", lyrics Rida Johnson Young, perf. New York City: 7 Nov. 1910. The lyrics of "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life", the centerpiece of this well-known American operetta, accurately reflect love's primacy and restorative powers: "For 'tis love, and love alone, the world is seeking. And 'tis love, and love alone, that can repay!" "Naughty Marietta" opened in New York City November 07, 1910.

^[5] Art Linkletter, KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1957) 51.