This is the text from our free study guide to the free booklet, Love: The Fourth Sunday of Advent.
Our loving relationships are wonderful, of course, and the images and themes of the holiday season are filled with family and friends, but the Christian understanding of love extends much further. We can love because God himself is love, shares love with us, and empowers us to love everyone and everything.
Love comes straight from God (1 Jn 4:7), and therefore we should love each other as Jesus loves us (Jn 13:34–35). Paul, in his first epistle to the church in Corinth, gives a particularly powerful description of this love: it is patient, kind and selfless. “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Cor 13:7–8, NRSVue). This might seem an impossible task, because how can we love like God does? The answer, Walter Hilton says, is that the gift of love is the Holy Spirit himself. The Holy Spirit lovingly gives himself to us, and a fruit of this relationship is the love we share with others (Gal 5:22). And what’s more, Thomas Aquinas reminds us, is that the love of God isn’t limited to humanity: this love extends to everything that exists. Building on the philosophical concept that existence itself is good, Aquinas says God wills good for everything that exists, and willing good for something means loving it. Therefore, he concludes, “the love of God infuses and creates goodness.”
Francis de Sales puts it wonderfully when he says, “the sunshine of God’s Love kindles every soul, and draws it to Himself.” God creates in love, sustains in love and, in a full cycle, greatly desires that we love him in return. Also, contrary to some Christian theologies, this love is not extended only to those empowered by God to return it, but instead is given to all, “a rich, overflowing sufficiency, such as one might look for from such boundless Goodness as His.” Augustine helps us incorporate this into our lives by saying, “we love God and our neighbor from one and the same love.” We see God when we see love, and this love then moves us to love others. In fact, Leo I of Rome teaches, our love is flawed if we do not share it with others. “The wide extent of Christian grace,” he says, “reaching to all parts of the whole world, looks down on no one, and teaches that no one is to be neglected.” Our love, even for our enemies, then becomes a means through which God reconciles all people.
Christina Rossetti brings all this back to the season with Love Came Down at Christmas, a poem based on 1 John 4:7–11. Christ is “Love all lovely, Love Divine,” and we thus “worship we our Jesus.” But now we have the question, “wherewith for sacred sign,” meaning, “while we worship Jesus, how do we and others see and experience this divine love now?” Her answer, much like Augustine’s, is through love: we will love each other, God and all humanity. Love is our plea (as John of the Cross says, “we will be judged on love alone”) because it is the gift given to us and that we give to others, and it is the sign of our lives in God. As Jesus tells us, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35, NRSVue).
