Some Thoughts on Divine Love

(via His Passion)

In my last post (on the Seraphim), I spoke briefly about Divine Love and how it is the core of the Holy Fire that burns through and around the servants of God. It is the soul-wrenching, overwhelming force which I have hinted at in several posts prior. And it is the principal reason why I am a Catholic.

But where does this love come from, and what makes this different from other loves? (Note here that I call it different from other loves, not better or more sacred. All the forms of love are sacred and holy when practiced in purity and with a focus on the Divine Will rather than the personal will.)

The reason why Divine Love (which is known as Agape) is different from other loves is that it is the essence of God Himself. It is an outpouring of the God-Nature over all creation, the overwhelming force which draws us closer to its Source and to all created things because of their part in His plan. Dante refers to this form of love in the last lines of the Paradiso when he writes:

Yet my wings were not meant for such a flight —
Except that then my mind was struck by lightning
Through which my longing was at last fulfilled.  

Here powers failed my high imagination:
But by now my desire and will were turned,
 Like a balanced wheel rotated evenly,

 By the Love that moves the sun and the other stars. (Canto XXIII, 139-145)

For it is truly this Love which infuses all of Creation, that sets the course of the planets and guides the hands of time. It is this Love which caused the very Source of Love to proclaim “It is good,” as He molded seas and earth and sky, and set the plants to bloom and the creatures to move about the earth. It is this Love that brought man gasping to life from clay, that molded woman from near the heart of man and gave her the need to return to that secure and blessed place. And so the spark of Divine Love birthed the objects of that Love, and to this day fuels all who seek the Source to find that same Love in the objects of it.

It is sometimes hard to love the other objects of Agape, particularly the human ones. Because Sin and Death entered creation through our ancestors, we are often blinded by fear and by malice — those maladies that draw us further from the only cure to them, that so make us hate our medicine, which is Love — and cannot bring ourselves to overflow with holy Love the way the angels do. And yet, to love God and to wish to be near Him forces our souls to cry out with Love, to seek the good in this world and to look forward with great longing for the fulfillment we can only find within God Himself . . . a fulfillment that will ignite our souls with Holy Fire and break our hearts with ecstatic joy.

We have but one calling as children of this Love, birthed from it and longing to be united with it. And that calling is to be a beacon, a reflection of Divine Love to all peoples and creatures and created things. Once we have aligned our Free Will with God’s Will — trading our shackles of clay and corruption for burning gold and silver as servants (freed by willing bondage) of Love Himself — we have no choice but to render this Love a thousandfold to all the ends of the Universe. Ours should be one united cry of Love that echoes throughout all Creation, shattering the armies of darkness, breaking the bonds of sin, and tearing apart the hearts and souls of the lost ones and bringing them home behind the trenches once more.

It is not an easy path, and yet to be the Ideal Self, the saint which God calls each human person to be, we must strive to wander it. He asks all of us, and we should give it. What greater purpose is there than to lay down all before the feet of our King, having fought through the mires of our own Sin-Nature and the snares laid by the Enemy and returned victorious to Him, our talents multiplied tenfold? There is nothing greater that we can do, and yet nothing more necessary by the very desires of our souls which long for Him so much that it rends our hearts in two.

Be brave in your journey, my brothers and sisters. Love and Peace as we have never known wait with laurels at the end of the road.

Reflect always the Light. Shine in dark places. Burn as a reflection of God’s Love for all. And remember, Love is the most powerful of all weapons when wielded with a pure heart and confidence in the Source of All Good Things.

-E. G. Norton