We are meant for communion

THIS may sound abstract, quixotic, irrelevant, but the truth is that we need to know it. It’s one of the big and ultimate things in our life that we need to know and, in fact, to achieve and live.

We are meant for communion—with God and among ourselves. It’s a complex, very dynamic goal, but at least we can talk a little about it. Even those with Christian faith don’t have a working idea about it, and we cannot remain there.

We have been equipped for communion because we have faculties and powers that enable us not only to know but also to love one another. We are meant to enter into one another’s lives, not as an intruder, but as a necessary element in everyone’s development.

This is what communion means. Though we are individuals, we need one another. And this need goes all the way to our being and nature. It’s not just a practical need, or a physical need, or an economic need. It goes deep into our nature.

That part of the creation narrative where Adam looked for another one like him after spending the day with the other creatures, happy but not quite, sheds light on the extent of the need we have to be with others, and of course, with God.

We have senses, intelligence and will, and a heart that not only knows but also loves. The distinction is crucial. With our senses, intelligence and will, we get to know things. We receive things.

The object known enters into the subject who knows, confirming that classic adage that the known is in the knower. The knower possesses the known object. Knowing enriches us, but it’s kind of a self-centered kind of enrichment.

It’s quite different with how the heart operates. Our heart also knows, but it does not get contented with that. By its very nature, it always tends to reach out, to give itself. Its proper language is loving whose trajectory is the reverse of that of knowing.

In loving, the lover gives himself to the object of his love. The lover is in the beloved. He loses himself willfully to his beloved. And yet, it’s losing that is actually a gain. In love, both parties gain—a win-win situation—as long as love is given and received properly.

So it’s quite an anomaly, a radical violation of its nature when the heart is made to love simply its own self. Sadly, this is possible, and in fact we are seeing a lot of cases of it, because we can misuse our freedom.

We can subordinate and restrict our heart and our loving first to the mechanics of knowing, then later on to greed and selfishness. That’s when we get self-absorbed, starting to create our own world, distancing ourselves from the real one. It’s a world that does not have its foundation in God.

In this distinction between knowing and loving, some words of St. Paul can be most relevant. “Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies. If anyone thinks that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, the same is known by him.” (1 Cor 8,1-3)

It’s clear from this Pauline doctrine that knowing can only be proper if motivated and driven by love of God. It will be a knowing that finds, handles and defends the truth in charity. It will be a knowledge that has the characteristics of charity as described by St. Paul:

“Patient, kind, envies not, deals not perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeks not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinks no evil, rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Cor 13,4-7)

But we should not put knowing and loving in conflict. They are both necessary to achieve the communion with God and among ourselves. But we have to understand that it is the loving that perfects the knowing. “We know in part…But when that which is perfect has come, that which is imperfect will be done away with.” (1 Cor 13, 9-10)

We have to be wary of our tendency to approach life in general with our senses and intelligence alone, and not with the heart. That can easily happen to us since the dynamics of our senses and intelligence often mesmerize us with instant sense of satisfaction, while that of the heart requires effort and sacrifice.