DIVINE LOVE QUALITIES

The Qualities of Divine Love

Our love for God has three basic qualities. They are sovereign, interior and effective.

A love that is sovereign esteems God above all persons and things. Only a supreme love is worthy of God since God is supremely love worthy. It need not be characterised by emotional warmth and tenderness (“affective summus” as the Latin expression has it); rather, it is “appreciative summus”, which means it is a love that appreciates God above all other goods. Thus, it is a matter of the mind and will, not of the feeling.

The interior quality of this love prevents it from being superficial, but rather imbues it with the inner spirit of genuineness, a love “in deed and in truth.” Here is the true virtue of charity, operating even to the giving up of one’s life for one’s neighbour as Christ did, proving itself by obedience to the commandments (cfr. 1 John 3, 22ff.) and guaranteeing life and union with God through the Holy Spirit. Since the Spirit’s presence is most interior and intimate, charity is interior, whereby it does not necessarily include the emotions.

Supernatural charity, finally, should be effective, i.e. it should lead to the efficacious striving for the realisation of God’s love. Love is a vital process, not something established once for all, even for one who is “established in grace.” In consists in avoidance of sin, observance of the commandments, concern for God’s glory in the smallest duties we perform, and considerateness towards the neighbour. There should be no false opposition between professional and social activities, on the one hand, and spiritual life, on the other (cfr. LG 42 & GS 43).

I am told that Jesus said to a holy person, “If you only knew how much I love you, you would die this very instant.” To me the logic is that it is better to die first and then know the love of Christ, which is to say, I cannot know the love of Christ unless I die. But do I have to wait till the end of my life to understand God’s love? No, certainly not. All I need is to die small deaths daily in order that I perceive the love of God. Sometimes the deaths can be big ones. But the more I die the more I perceive his love. The highest value is God’s love, and access to it is death. Let me not fear the small deaths or the big one that will happen at the end. Now I see: love and death; love as strong as death.

Do I want a loveless death or a deathless love?

What Loving God means

Since defining love by love is redundant, we should try to describe what love of God really means in practice. Evidently, our love is the love of benevolence by which we mean well and desire the good of the beloved. But what good can we wish for God since he is absolute goodness? We can at least do the following:

a)     we can approve of and esteem the good that he possesses or, in fact, is.

b)    as we cannot protect and promote God’s welfare, we can surely delight in God and contemplate his infinite goodness, and be happy about his blessedness.

c)     even if we cannot add to the intrinsic glory and perfection of God, we can show our love by adding to his extrinsic glory and praise by working for the establishment of his reign, and praying for it, too: “…hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”

d)    as love of friendship and devotion, our love of God tends towards communion and total abandonment to him

In fine, love is the joyous approval of God’s infinite goodness and the desire to further the external glory of God and to be united with him permanently. It is the joyful, dedicated approval of everything that God is and wills. The love of God is further manifested in dedication to truth, justice, art, science, country and family.

St John Mary Vianney’s Prayer of Love in itself:

          I love you, O my God. My only desire is to love you, until the last breath of my life. I love you, O infinitely lovable God, and I prefer to die loving you rather than to live for an instant without you. I love you, O my God, and I desire only to go to heaven to have the happiness of loving you perfectly. I love you, O my God, and my only fear is to go to hell because one will not have the sweet solace of loving you there. O my God, if my tongue cannot say it at all times that I love you, at least I want my heart to repeat it to you as I breathe…I beg you that as I come closer to my final end, you will increase and perfect my love for you. Amen

Fr. Karl Rahner’s Prayer of Love in mission:

          Lord, teach me to pray, teach me to love you. Then I shall forget my own wretchedness, because then I will be able to do what wretchedness makes me forget to do: to bring the poverty of my sisters and brothers into your richness. In you, God of my sisters and brothers, I will be able really to be a brother to others, one who can help them in the one thing necessary: finding you.