Knowing and loving Christ

WITH Christ, it is not enough to know him. We also have to

love him. With Christ, to know him truly is to love him also. In fact,

we cannot say we really know him unless we love him too.

            With him, these two spiritual operations of ours merge

into a unity, although they have different directions. In knowing, the

object known is in the knower. It has an inward movement. The knower

possesses the known object.

            In loving, the lover is in the beloved. It has an outward

movement. It is the beloved that possesses the lover. The lover gets

identified with the beloved. The lover becomes what he loves.

            In knowing, the knower abstracts things from his object of

interest and keeps them to himself. In loving, the lover gives himself

to the beloved. In a sense, the lover loses himself in the beloved.

            Of course, there are many things that we know but which we

do not have to love, or even that we should not love. We can know a

lot of evils, but we should never love them. If anything at all, our

knowledge of them is just for the sake of prudence.

            But whatever good we know, we should also love, otherwise

we would fall into some anomaly of inconsistency. In whatever is good,

we should not be contented with knowing it. We should love it. Let’s

remember what St. Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthians in

this regard:

            “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone

imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to

know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.” (8,1-2)

            And we can add that if one is known by God, he somehow

already knows everything that he ought to know since God, who

possesses him because he loves God, knows everything. In other words,

he shares in the knowledge of God.

            Since Christ is for us the highest good we can have, we

should both know and love him to the max. We should not just know him

and not love him, nor should we just love him without knowing him—or

at least, trying to know him the best way that we can, since being

God, Christ has aspects that are a mystery to us, that is, beyond our

capacity to know him fully.

            It’s when we love him with all our heart as we are

commanded to do (cfr. Mt 22,37) that whatever inadequacy we have with

respect to our knowledge of him, is taken care of. If our heart is

united we the heart of God, that is, when we are in love with God, we

in a mysterious way share in the omniscience of God.

            That is why we can say that those simple people with great

love and piety for God has greater knowledge of God than those erudite

theologians and philosophers whose love and piety for God is not as

great as those of the simple people, in spite of the fact that they

may have studied the faith a lot more.

            This does not mean that loving God with the heart more

than the head is a matter of indulging in emotionalism and things like

that. If one truly loves God with his whole heart, he also will do

everything in his human capacity to study his faith well and to

conform his life to that faith.

            Loving God never compromises our rational nature that has

both the intuitive and discursive capabilities. Loving God uses these

capabilities to the hilt but also acknowledges the limitations of

these human powers. Loving God, more than anything else, involves the

role of grace that God himself unstintingly gives us but to which we

have to correspond properly with our acts of piety.

Never be lonely

WE have no reason to ever feel lonely. That’s because

whether we realize it or not, we are never alone. God is always with

us. And I am sure, many people, especially our parents and those who

love us in some way, keep us in their mind and heart. We should never

feel alone.

            Being our Creator, God can never be away from us. He is,

in fact, at the very core of our being. And to be sure, he is not in

us in some indifferent way. He loves us no end, even if we mess up

with his will.

            And that’s simply because being the Creator, he is not

only the giver of our existence but also and more importantly, the

maintainer of our existence. We revert to nothing the moment he

abandons us.

            As Creator, God loves us no end, because love is the only

reason why he created us. He gains nothing if we exist or not. He just

created us simply because he wants to, and that is precisely what love

is all about. It is a completely gratuitous self-giving.

            And let’s never forget that in creating us, he created us

to be like him, “in his image and likeness,” it is said. (cfr. Gen

1,27) Together with the angels, we are the ones among all his

creatures that he freely chose to raise to that tremendous dignity.

Can there be a greater evidence of God’s love for us than this?

            Even more, while we botched his original plan for us, he

continued to love us even more by redeeming us, allowing the Son to

become man and to die for us on the cross!

            This is the basis of that famous passage from the Book of

Isaiah: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no

compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will

not forget you!” (49,15) And more clearly, Christ said: “I am with you

always, even unto the end of the world.” (Mt 28,20)

            It’s important that we never feel alone or lonely, since

that condition makes us vulnerable to our weaknesses and to

temptations. They eventually lead us to sin. That’s why St. Augustine

once said: “Without you (God), all to me is misery.”

            Let’s be most careful when for reasons of our need for

privacy or rest or moments of prayer, contemplation and recollection

when we distance ourselves from others, we might fall into thinking

that we are alone and therefore can feel lonely. On the contrary these

moments are the best in terms of putting us in communion with God and

with others.

            We should just train ourselves to be always aware of the

others: first, God, and then the others. In fact, it should not just

be a matter of awareness, but of being thoughtful, concerned and be

truly in love.

            Which means that our mind and heart should always be with

God and with the others. They should never be circling around

ourselves, our interests, our plans and other pursuits. But since we

cannot escape from our own selves, let us see to it that everything

that we are and have, everything that we think, say or do should

always be related to God and to the others. That is the proper

trajectory of our whole being.

            Thus, we need to make some kind of plan to translate this

ideal into a reality in our life. We should have practices that direct

all we are to God and to others the whole day, from morning till

sleeping time. And in our sleep, if we are consistent in pursuing this

ideal during the day, for sure our dreams will also revolve around God

and the others.

            Hopefully, this ideal of never feeling alone and always

thinking of God and the others becomes an instinct in us!

The wheat and the weeds

IT’S good to review that wonderful parable about the wheat

and the weeds and to savor the great lesson it gives us. (cfr. Mt

13,24-30) To be sure, the parable is very relevant these days as there

is a crying need to sharpen our skill at discerning between the good

and the evil that in today’s world are so mixed up that we often would

not know which is which.

            Christ tells us to be patient with that predicament. We

should not over-react by uprooting what we consider as the weeds, or

the evil elements in our life, because most likely we would cause more

harm than good that way.

            “No,” the master in the parable told his servants who

suggested that they uproot the weeds, “because while you are pulling

the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together

until the harvest.” (Mt 13,29) The condition is so complicated that we

would not really have the precision to distinguish one from the other.

            Let’s not forget that the way things are nowadays, the

evil things can look like the good things, and vice-versa, the good

things can also look like the bad things. In fact, there are times

when what may begin as something good can turn bad due to lack of

rectitude of intention, and also vice-versa, what may begin as bad may

turn to be something good when a conversion takes place. These are

confusing times!

            To top it all, the confusing condition is not limited only

to our surroundings. It can start at our very own selves. Remember the

lament of St. Paul: “In my inner being I delight in God’s law. But I

see another law at work in my body, warring against the law of my mind

and holding me captive to the law of sin that dwells within me. What a

wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom

7,22-24)

            Of course, we are told not to over-react to this condition

because as St. Paul again said: “Where sin increased, grace abounded

all the more.” (Rom 5,20) We should never forget this

divinely-inspired reassurance.

            Christ has advised us just to wait till the time of real

reckoning comes when the truly good things would be separated from the

bad things, and their due reward or penalty would be given. We are

told that at that time, what is hidden now will be uncovered, what is

spoken in the dark will be heard in the daylight. (cfr. Lk 12,2)

            In the meantime, we should try our best to be truly

guarded, ever sharpening our knowledge about what is truly good and

bad, and deepening our virtue of patience. Of course, in all of this,

what is important is that we identify ourselves with Christ more and

more.

            That’s because only with Christ would we know what is good

and bad. Only with him also would we know how to be patient, how to

suffer out of love for God and for everybody. The true face of evil,

of sin can only be identified if our relation with God who is revealed

to us by Christ is strong.

  

            In this regard, the Catechism says: “To try to understand

what sin is, one must first recognize the profound relation of man to

God, for only in this relationship is the evil of sin unmasked in its

true identity as humanity’s rejection of God and opposition to him,

even as it continues to weigh heavy on human life and history.” (CCC

386)

            The question to ask and the challenge to tackle now is how

can we make our relation with God so strong that we be very sharply

discerning of what is good and evil, and at the same time be patient

and strong enough to be able to bear the unavoidable evil we will

always have in the world?