February is the month in which many people celebrate Valentine’s Day, and while romantic and spousal love are important to celebrate, it made me think about love more widely as a vocation for all of us. We might wonder, for example, How can we best love God?
In St. Augustine’s work, On the Trinity, the saint says the following to people who wonder how to love the Trinitarian God:
Let no one say, “I do not know what I should love.” Let him love his brother and he will love the same love. For he knows the love by which he loves more than the brother whom he loves. And so, God can become more known to him than his brother, more known because more present, more known because within him, more known because more certain…you do see the Trinity if you see love. (Book Eight, chapter eight, trans. Stephen McKenna C.SS.R)
What a remarkable thing to say: we know God in the very act of loving, in knowing the love that we feel and embody in loving fellow human beings. God is not distant, inaccessible, nor an abstract idea that we must somehow grit our teeth to try to know. God is closer than we can imagine, so close that we might not recognize that God is right there in loving (and, I might add, we know God when we know that we are loved and when we are the recipient of another’s love and care).
The Christian and Jewish traditions tell us what that looks like concretely: “Share your bread with the hungry, / and bring the homeless poor into your house; / when you see the naked, to cover them / …Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; / you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.” (Isaiah 58:7,9)
A student of mine who serves at a shelter for homeless women shared with my class the importance of acknowledging and greeting people who are unhoused. So often people are ignored as if invisible, and this invisibility itself, along with the lack of housing, food, or warmth on these cold days, can be painful. We can share our money with organizations that feed people or a sandwich with a person in need on the street. If we can’t take those actions, even greeting someone and sharing a few words can make a difference.
St. Ignatius was steeped in this tradition, that we know God in the very action of service and care for others. When we love, whomever we love, we find God is as near as anything, nearer even than the other person, because God is love, and we all have inside us a richness of love that stems from God’s selfless love. Let’s take the time to love, to act in love, and to reflect and give thanks that God’s love is so near at hand in everyday life.
