By Father José Noriega, D.C.J.M.
Professor, St. John Vianney Theological Seminary
What do you see when you see a Christian father spend time with his son and bring out the greatness within him?
What do you see when you see a Christian husband living for his wife with creativity and building a family together?
What do you see when you see a person who forgives his enemy after a painful offense?
St. Augustine’s answer is clear: “If you see charity, you see the Trinity.”
This is true because human love reflects the Trinity — the lover (the Father), the beloved (the Son) and love itself (the Holy Spirit). But even more, it is true because if that father, that spouse and that man are Christians and live in grace, then they love with the divine love that dwells in their human love. Christian tradition has given this love a special name: charity.
Today, we reduce charity to the charitable works we do for others. Of course, these, too, are charity. But charity is something much greater. It indicates not only some kind of action but the love that Christ has given us, which through grace becomes our love and inspires a new life with a wide variety of actions. Charity is not only the love that Christ has for us but the love that he gives us; it is not only the love he commands us to have for others in the two “greatest commandments” but the love that enables us to fulfill those commandments. On its own, this teaching would have been an ideal that would have been impossible to attain. We would have been stuck in the tension of loving God above ourselves and our neighbor as ourselves. But, thanks be to God, Christ not only taught us a new love, but he gave us this new love, his love, the love that moved him to love the Father and to love us. This love — charity — makes loving Christ and our neighbors possible.
What was his love like?
It was a human love that knew of affection and corporeality, feelings and relationships, decision and truth. The Holy Spirit moved and inflamed this love: “By virtue of the eternal Spirit, he offered himself as a sacrifice to God” (Heb 9:14). The same Spirit that moved Jesus’ heart to give of himself so completely is the one that Christ gives us. His Holy Spirit, dwelling in us, can also move and inflame us. The Spirit exclaims in our hearts, “Abba, Father!” and leads us closer to the Father’s heart. That same spirit can move us to give ourselves to the Father as Christ himself did. Thus, the Father recognizes his Son in each of us. And others, seeing our love — our charity — for one another, recognize that we are disciples of the Lord.
The great monk St. Maximus the Confessor noted that very dynamic in the seventh century: “Many have said many things about love, but after searching for it, I have found it only among the disciples of Christ.”
We receive from Christ, therefore, not only a magnificent teaching or a more perfect law, but a new love.
Reflecting on the words of Christ in John 15:15 — “I no longer call you servants, but friends” — St. Thomas Aquinas saw that Christ could call us friends not because he simply had a feeling of empathy with us or because we “felt” loved by him. For the medieval theologian, the essence of love was not in the feelings but rather in our participation in God’s beatitude; through the Holy Spirit, we are made sharers in Christ’s happiness. What is proper to friends is not the feelings that they have, for feelings are like a spark that comes and goes. The essential thing about friends is that they share their gifts together: one shares with the other what he is and what he has in reciprocity. And Christ models this perfectly; he has not only made known to us all that he has heard from the Father, but he has made us sharers in all that he has received from the Father: “I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (Jn 17:22).
The exchange of love that the Father and Christ had in the Spirit is the exchange of love that Christ now has with us thanks to the same Spirit. It follows that that father, that spouse and that friend now love as Christians; they also love with the love of Christ. Not only with their human love — that is, with their paternal or spousal love, or love of friendship — but with the love of Christ, with charity. A fire dwells in their hearts, as dwelled in the Heart of Christ. And this fire not only gives a new strength and unexpected energy, but it gives a new quality to our love, a unique and precise direction.
Charity moves and directs us to love God as the ultimate goal of our lives, he who has conquered our hearts, draws us to himself and calls us to unite ourselves with him. At the same time, charity moves us to love people so that they can fulfill their lives in God, so that they, too, can be united to God in the fragility of our earthly community. Thus, there is no division between loving God and loving our neighbor because when we love our neighbor, we love him not simply so that he may live a happy life but so that he may fulfill his life in God, so that the glory of God may shine in him even now.
Charity expands that father’s heart and helps him love his son so that his son may fulfill his life in God, not only in eternal life but even here on earth, in family communion.
It expands the husband’s and wife’s hearts and helps them live for each other in a creative reciprocity of their spousal love, not only in eternal life but even while on earth. Conjugal love is thus transformed into conjugal charity, as St. John Paul II said, and thus marriage becomes the place of covenant with God, the channel of divine graces.
The person who loves and forgives his enemy does not simply turn the other cheek, but even more, his love and forgiveness will be like Christ’s, because they actually share in it. Just as Christ died for us while we were still living in ungodliness and at enmity with God (cf. Rm 5), our loving forgiveness can bring about new life, transforming enemies into friends.
Whoever loves and forgives while living in grace manifests the love he or she has received from Christ; thus, their love and forgiveness can transform the enemy into a friend. “Where there is no love, put love, and you will reap love,” said the mystical poet St. John of the Cross.
When the Spirit of Christ enters into the human heart, he makes our loves true and holy, capable of sanctifying, even deifying. This is true Christian friendship and charity. This is the love that transforms persons, families and society.
This love overflows to us in the Eucharist. There, we have no doubt: “My body for you,” which means that God loves us to the end. These are clear words that make us see the immensity of his love. And whoever says “Amen” and receives the body of Christ allows the dynamism of his love to move him to say to his son, to his spouse, to his enemy: “My body for you,” “my life for you,” “my time for you,” “my resources for you.”
If you see this love, you see the Trinity.
