Sixth Sunday of Easter
Love begins with fear. This fear reveres, respects, and regards love’s awesome, amazing, and astonishing power. This fear stands aback, frightful of love’s intensity and immensity because love is not natural, but supernatural. A force that breathes forth life, liberty, and love. Love is the greatest wonder. It embodies justice, holiness, and is born of truth (Eph 4:23). It is born of God Who makes us wonder and ponder his mysterious presence.
Love’s mystical and mysterious power shocks. Standing aback from this immense force which reveals itself not as a what, but a Who. We understand this force as the First Cause, the Creator of all things. His name is I AM. He is a person, totaliter aliter, totally other. Nothing compares. Nothing created resembles Him for He is Uncreated Love. His love, awesome and almighty, pure and undefiled, cannot be grasped, even understood, because He is uncreated and we are created. Creation reveals glimpses of his immensity because in each act of creation, He personifies his love. We, his creations, express his essence. As the Psalmist affirms, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (Ps 139:6).
The Divine Persons are Love personified. They are persons and the essence of a person is love. We are persons because they imbue us with their Love. We are made in the image and likeness of God Who gives us his identity. We express his wonders for we are “wondrously made. Wonderful are your works” as the Psalmist sings (Ps 139. 14). This divine personification creates immense fear, not the fear we have of evil: avoidance and aversion, but the fear that comes from the wonder and awe of our God, Who willingly shares his essence.
In sharing Himself, we lose ourselves. We lose our human identity, being lifted up into his Divine Identity. To be assumed into the supernatural as He, Jesus, lowered Himself to take our nature, to become human, creates reverential fear. Awestruck that our God would humble Himself out of pure love to raise us up expresses the awe and wonder we ought to have. He became human so we could become divine. How awesome and wonderful.
Fear comes as we submit and partake in the divine identity through God’s gift of pure Love, the Holy Spirit. Being in his loving presence, fear comes understanding the impossibility of this transformation, but grasping at our glorification as it is so inviting and fulfilling. His love is our delight and our delight is his joy.
Love’s power divinizes that which He creates. Like raging torrents, divine love floods us not to burst and break but to expand and fill. Love’s power enlarges, increases, and enhances beyond our belief causing immense fear. This fear, the reverence we show to Love Himself, comes from beholding his sheer beauty and glory. This glorification is our perfection. For this, we are made. We are to become perfect expression of Divine Love’s personification.
Divine Love transforms what is lowly, making us partakers of his Divinity. Sharing in his divinity, we see, though veiled, what we really are. We are expressions of Divine Goodness revealing his absolute beauty and glory. Our minds cannot fathom perfection but we do grasp the enormity of this invitation. Invited to partake fully in Divine Love, perfect love needs to dwell within our total being. Afraid of perfect love, we hide, even seek the darkness for we know we are not worthy. Yet, Love does not need us to be worthy, just willing. Divine Love will make us worthy. Our hearts merely need to be open to receive his gift.
Love’s Gift, the Holy Spirit, is reciprocal. He gives and we receive. In receiving, we give and He receives our love graciously perfecting us so we my share fully in his presence. In this wonderful exchange, our total transformation takes place. We partake of Divine Love and then personify divine love by becoming his perfect created expressions.
Human love fears this gift, not the fright that comes from dread, but the fear that comes from the magnitude and majesty of this exchange. The only response in judgement is our full prostration, so humbled by his radiance and brilliance. Unlike natural fears, which frighten as they cause panic and dread, our fear of supernatural Love humbles us. Our imperfections need removal. Our wounds need healing. Our sins need forgiveness.
In the Divine Light, Love’s power beautifies everything He touches. His Spirit demolishes the terrors and horrors that cause us panic. He transforms our faults and failures into expressions of goodness and beauty. He then transforms us from merely a natural to a supernatural existence for the Divine Presence longs to abide—dwell within—our very being.
Love’s power takes the injustices and rectifies them, then reconciles us establishing justice once again. Love’s power sanctifies, making us pure removing any and all defilements within our ability to love. Love’s power reveals the truth. Love is Truth and his Truth penetrates our minds, so we no longer fear our imperfections but embrace Love’s power to perfect.
Longing to share Himself with us, He invites us to share completely and fully in his life-giving gift of Pure Love. Jesus, according to John’s Gospel, expresses this communion of love when He tells us “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples” (Jn 15:7–8).
His desire fortifies our hearts so we may not fear, but bear fruit a 100-fold. His desire increases ours that we may multiply and bring forth life through our love. His desire inspires our desires that we want nothing other than what He wants, and we want nothing other than what He wants. Thus, He gives us everything we want because we want nothing other than Him, his Love.
His Love breathes forth life into our very being so that where I am, He is and where He is, I am. His abiding presence fills the universe with beauty, majesty, and glory. Yet, we, made in Love’s image and likeness, are more than just beautiful and wonderful carvings or paintings. We are living vessels—more precious than stones of silver or gold. We too are imbued with the wonder and awe of love. When we choose to receive his love, we increase. When we choose to receive love and then give this love away as a gift, we become like Him, obedient to the Law of Love.
Love obeys. It sets us free. Obedience understood legally or rationally creates a slavish fear. Our fears arise from the punishments we face if we fail to obey. Obedience understood relationally recognizes the dignity not only of the person we love, the Holy Spirit; but through obedience, we see our dignity: we are persons perfected by another’s love. Love sets us free to become all that Love intends us to be. He wishes solely our goodness. He wants our perfection. It is our choice to receive and be free in his love. This is who we are: persons made to love. Love, giving and receiving, is our essence too.
To inspire our choice, Jesus invites us to keep his commandments. These commandments are more than laws and duties, they reveal God’s inner life: Who He is. He is transcendent, totally other. He is the source and summit of all Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. The commandments, then, reveal his very
self. They illustrate who we are and what we ought to do. We are to love with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might (Deut 6:4). The commandments, extensions of God’s essence, expresses his Love and Truth purifying and perfecting our love. No longer does fear overwhelm for we understand His perfect love casts out all our fear.
He, Truth, sets us free for Truth is not a what, but a Who, the Logos, the Word made Flesh. His name is Jesus. He is the Christ Who Redeems us. Through his Love, Jesus reveals the divine plan, ordering of our minds and hearts not solely to the reasonable and rational, but to the mystical and spiritual. He orders us to love. This order bring complete joy, the abundance of life.
These transcendent realities, Truth, Justice, and Love cannot been be fully grasped, unless revealed. His Love reveals his Law as a gift, for the Law expresses his love which makes us good. His Law makes us just. Understanding the Command to Love as his gift, He sets us free, directing us to be fully human, divinized by his grace. Divinized, his Law sanctifies and makes us perfect. Nothing more beautiful exists than being in harmony with another glowing with perfect Love, Justice, and Truth.
The Psalmist understands our awe when the Great I AM speaks commanding us to love. Instead of fear: thinking we are unworthy to be loved, Jesus invites us into his presence empowering us with his love. Empowered, we “Take delight in the LORD” knowing he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4).