Love Is Strong
As a culture, we sometimes consider abstract notions worthless. Though we value love, as seen in all of literature and art, we do not grasp the fullness of its power in our lives. Love is the material of existence, the essence of things concrete. Love is strong.
In reading Song of Songs, I found verses that beautifully illustrate the strength, vigor and power of true love. “Set me as a seal on your heart, as a seal on your arm; For stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion; its flames are a blazing fire. Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away. Were one to offer all he owns to purchase love, he would be roundly mocked” (8:6-7). I especially enjoy the last part, the imagery of being “roundly mocked” for thinking love could be purchased or have an attainable price. The strength of love is the cause of our existence.
The Catechism reminds us in paragraph 301 that our every breath is dependent on God choosing to love us each moment. He “upholds and sustains [us] in being,” and if he ceased to love us we would cease to exist, body and soul. It is incredible to me that with every beat of my heart God whispers the words of life to my soul: “I love you.” Even more incredible is a certain comment of Pope Benedict XVI’s in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est. I was looking for concrete proof of an abstract power, and what I found completely transformed the way I see the crucifix.
He wrote, “[God’s passionate love for humanity] is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice…His death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning…in order to raise man up and save him.” God, who is entirely beyond our comprehension, who created the universe and all that ever was and ever shall be…God, the only absolute, without beginning or end…he turned against himself because of love. It is unfathomable, and the barest understandings of it give me chills.
Yet more than his death, his Resurrection manifests the full powers of love in the most tangible fashion possible. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, explained in his “Introduction to Christianity” that man is entirely finite except for the capacity of God’s love, which transcends both life and death to make man eternal. Page 304 details,
“If the power of love for another were so strong somewhere that it could keep alive not just his memory, the shadow of his ‘I,’ but that person himself, then a new stage in life would have been reached. This would mean that the realm of biological evolutions and mutations had been left behind and the leap made to a quite different plane, on which love was no longer subject to bios but made use of it.”
Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearances and interactions are evidence of this new plane transcendent love creates. He is seen, but not recognized; he is touched, and he eats, but physical barriers are no obstacle. When humanity is perfected, reality no longer abides by the laws of science but the laws of love.
The magnificent consequences of love’s power astound me. Nothing can contend with the inexplicable joy found here. God loves you. And he will turn against his justice and craft reality anew and let us torture and humiliate and kill him so that you—not merely your memory, but you as a being—can live eternally…so he can keep saying, “I love you.”
