AGAPE

(From Chapters 9 & 10 of our book A Message For Its Own Time.)

THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY

The ‘spiritual revolution’ [1] which is Christianity, is deepening and growing into its third phase.

This epoch of great change that we are living through has such great potential. God is gifting us in the modern age with increasingly deeper insight into our humanity, such as psychology, clearer understanding of human development and vaster knowledge of the world we live in. This is causing a great deal of rethinking; our assumptions about other people and ourselves are being adjusted. The modern age seems at present to be a melting pot of ideas and theories, and these need Christian synthesising. Through the Second Vatican Council, the Spirit called us to take the modern world seriously, to dialogue with it, and to return to the basics of our own revelation and practice in order to effectively bless and enlighten the people of our day. In consequence a renewal of Christianity is developing which is still rather mixed up in most of our minds. The need to purify our thinking under the guidance of the Spirit is urgent. Where do the basics of Christianity lie?

They are fundamentally summed up in John 3:16:

‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn the world but so that through him the world might be saved’.

It is the love of God which is the key to everything. That is Christianity’s basis.

What does love mean?

The word ‘love’ has so many meanings. We naturally think of it in human terms, but the supreme insight of Christianity is that we base our understanding of love on God’s love which is very distinct from human loving. To express this the New Testament coins the word ‘Agape’. Human love at its best can be heroic and sometimes seem superhuman. It can not happen without God’s help. But it is not always Agape. We need to understand what Agape is.

In the English speaking world many of our bible translations translate Agape as ‘Charity’. That word has lost its power as ‘Charity’ nowadays largely means outreaches to help those in need. Consequently the meaning of Agape has become obscured for many of us.

The word ‘Agape’ occurs over 200 times in the New Testament. Perhaps the most familiar passage where it is used is in 1 Corinthians 12-13 beginning with:

‘Be ambitious for the higher gifts, and I am going to show you a way that is better than any of them. If I have all the eloquence of men or of angels but speak without love…’ (1 Corinthians 12-13).

What is Paul getting at? He is addressing the Church in Corinth which had great spiritual gifts such as prophecy, healing, and words of wisdom, but it was riddled with division. Is he calling the community to have more consideration of each other, even the self-denial which puts others before self? No, he is talking about something much greater, something which heals the heart of the community, which is Agape.

This passage (1 Corinthians 12-13) is used often at Christian weddings, with the intention of expressing the aspirations of those who wish to love wholeheartedly. Implicit in that is a prayer for God to empower us when we find love difficult. That is a gift greatly to be prayed for, and what better way for a couple to plight their troth than before the Father who alone can empower such love? But few couples imagine what they are truly asking for. Agape is something superior to human love as that is commonly understood.

Paul, uses the Agape word for love in 2 Corinthians 5: 14 when he says ‘the love of Christ impels us’. Translators of the Bible take different stabs at delivering the meaning. Some say it “constrains us”, as though we are tied up by it and coerced. Some say “overwhelms us” as though we are lifted to a different dynamic than love as we normally experience it. Some say it “urges” us as though it is a deeply felt need. Clearly, Paul is attempting to describe a different reality to what we normally mean by love, even at its most heroic.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines Agape well:

Agape, Greek agapē, in the New Testament, the fatherly love of God for humans, as well as the human reciprocal love for God. In Scripture, the transcendent agape love is the highest form of love and is contrasted with eros, or erotic love, and philia, or brotherly love.

This rightly states that Agape is the highest form of love, God’s love for us and our loving God back. Paul, in 1 Corinthians: 13, calls it the gift that is ‘better than any’, for which we should ‘be ambitious’. It enters the human heart and transforms it gradually. It is the true meaning of being justified or righteous. By it, our hearts are righted, set right, stood on their true basis, which is to be the beloved of God.

Agape does not spring from our natural human powers to love as we know them. It is the transforming of the heart after it has entered ‘the gates of holiness…the Lord’s own gate where the just may enter’. This is a gate which the Lord alone can ‘open’ (Grail Psalm 118: 19-20). With it, the human heart is righted, because it was originally and fundamentally made for this divine love to be its primary source of life. We are the beloved children of God beautifully created to live in God’s family. That fundamental rightness was gravely upset at the Fall of mankind. But it has been wonderfully restored by Christ’s work on Calvary.

Agape is the ‘greatest of all’ of the gifts of God, to be sought before all others, because it makes all other loves Christian. It purifies our human love gradually, and must be continually prayed for. In so far as we fall in love with God, we will be enabled to fall in love with everyone.

Contemplation

In the Our Father, when Jesus shows us many forms of prayer. He puts first hallowing the name of the Father. This is not just praise with lips and songs, but reverence and awe - ultimately adoration. I have seen a group of youngsters joyfully praising God with the enthusiasm so characteristic of youth, but then become quiet in profound adoration.

Contemplation is not Meditation

The habit of adoration arises from the practice of contemplation. It is distinct from meditation. Meditation is the raising of our minds to God through considering some truth about him which arises from study or spiritual reading or lectio divina or other forms such as the prayer of imagination. It leads to gradual enlightenment, but it usually is an exercise of the intellect which, at its best, can lead our hearts to burn within us. It strengthens conviction and it motivates us to hope. It disposes us to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit especially wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. It is an essential prayer for maturing Christians, and prompts us to love God. We prepare our minds for it through focusing on truth, and we will often have to keep refocusing because our busy minds are easily distracted.

However Meditation is not the path to the supreme gift of the Holy Spirit, Agape; contemplation is. Meditation is the raising of the mind to God, contemplation is the raising of the heart. Meditation exposes the yearnings of the heart for God; contemplation is the opening of the yearning heart to meet God in love.

Contemplation is primarily not about what is happening within our selves; it is encountering God and knowing him. Then words fail. Concepts are inadequate. Only the heart is open to God. Jesus instructs us to use all the other forms of prayer that he includes in the ‘Our Father’, but the prayer that he puts first, contemplation (hallowed be thy name), is the deepest prayer of the heart and we are called to give time to it. We leave aside concerns, worries, thoughts, feelings and stand before God with hearts open. That is how we come to know not about him, but to know him - through love, Agape.

The author of ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’  writes:

‘God’s grace restores our souls and teaches us how to comprehend him (God) through love. He is incomprehensible to the intellect. Even angels know him by loving him. Nobody’s mind is powerful enough to grasp who God is. We can only know him by experiencing his love’. 

In contemplation we have to enter the cloud of unknowing, set aside emotions and thoughts and images which can never grasp God, and just long for God. Distractions will come and so will deep understandings, but these need to be turned away. Gradually with time and perseverance, the sense of God’s love deepens and we become more and more devoted to our Father. Also we begin to experience Jesus’ love for everyone. As we progress we can experience dark nights of the senses and also of the soul, but the progression is into deeper and deeper loving union with God.

Jesus took Peter, James and John up the mountain of Tabor to witness his glory, but when the ‘bright cloud’ (Matthew: 17: 5) descended and the Father’s voice was heard, they were terrified and fell face down. In his mercy, Jesus treats us more gently. He himself leads us into the cloud of the mystery of love to meet the Father. This is Agape, the greatest gift of God. 

THE CHRISTIAN HEART

The cry of God’s children

Through Agape, the Holy Spirit releases within us the cry of the child of God: ‘Abba, Father!’ (Rm 8: 15). St Augustine in his Confessions writes: 

“Late have I loved you, Oh Beauty ever old and ever new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours”.

The effects of God’s children

A person who is developing in Agape, becomes more and more a fountain of grace and direction to others. The gifts of the Holy Spirit grow as fruit from their lives: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control’ (Galatians 5: 22). How much we strive through our own selves to produce these fruits, and yet they flow from the lovers of God. Jesus teaches us to put our selves humbly before the Father so that our inner selves, our spirits, can emerge.

Agape makes us naked before the Lord and other people. We clad ourselves with so many coverings. Our skin is vulnerable. All of it reacts to touch, especially if that touch is painful; it is the same with our sensitivities. So we work hard at developing a suit of armour to protect ourselves. This may give us a sense of security, but it also increasingly isolates and cripples us, though even the best armours have chinks. From our earliest childhood, our experiences of pain and the failures of love induce us to construct this armour. Bit by bit, with our cooperation, the Father’s love unbuckles the different layers of armour, allowing his love, breathing through ours, to cast his light more effectively in our world.

Do not be surprised if he unbuckles it from the inside; the transformation begins in the heart, and only gradually penetrates into our words and deeds. We can see God acting in this way when, on the shore of Galilee, Jesus took Peter aside and three times asked his three times betrayer ‘do you love me’. The third time, Peter humbly, almost tearfully, confesses ‘Lord, you know I love you’. He was being called to an identity different to the strong individual he thought he was. The man, who drew the sword in Gethsemane but then ran away to save his skin, began to be a new creation. He was sensing and choosing a trajectory, the course of which would transform him into one of the dearly beloved lovers of God.

Reality check

           God’s love gradually enables us to grow. Lovers cannot hide their true selves from each other. That is frightening because, as their brokenness is revealed, they become dependent on the love of the other to aid their healing. Faults which they could not face or fix themselves, their very vulnerability, need the lover’s kiss. Sadly, that is often not forthcoming; many lovers turns their face away. God never turns his face away. As his love penetrates the exterior of our hardened hearts, the brokenness of our hearts of flesh emerges bit by bit. It is still frightening, because we can be shocked by recognising wounds and failures which we had not been aware of, or excruciatingly shamed by admitting those we have never been able to fix.

           In order to heal and restore us, he will sometimes lead us into wild and frightening places calling us to face the demons that obstruct our way to fuller life. He does not hide the fact that picking up the cross daily is the way forward, but he is right there on that cross with us until it is accomplished. Oh, the joy and the peace as we become more free!

Western culture idealises the right of every human person to be free, and that usually means permission to do what we want. The freedom God brings about within us is the freedom to be the greatness that we really are. Gradually we are transformed into the utterly unique image of God that each of us is. The life force of God which is gradually released into his servants, his Spirit, moves more freely in us. It is not techniques that we acquire, but life. Bit by bit it dawns on us that there is nothing else worth doing. And the process continues along the long path of becoming ‘like stars’ (Daniel 12: 3).

Achievements without Agape

If I dedicate my entire life to service, or use my talents superlatively, or bear unimaginable burdens, but am without Agape, I am only working out of a self that is hidebound by my armour. One day, despite my personal efforts or talents, my energy will dry up. Then I will be left languishing inside my suite of armour. It is dark there and lonely. But, if I have sought the supreme gift of Agape, and walk as one of God’s lovers, seeking his face daily, learning to cherish his presence at every step, I do not have to be superhuman or a hero. I will radiate God wherever I am. I will, in the midst of tragedy bring hope, in a broken world bring joy, and in turmoil peace. As I willingly receive the gift of Agape, it will gradually develop me.

I will not lose my identity as I become a channel of God’s love. I will achieve my true identity. The more people see Christ in me, the more they will see the real me, where the Lord has help me to lose the parts that I thought made me unique and valuable. I do not need them. I am unique and valued. I am one of God’s chosen lovers.

I will not be afraid of defeat and failure, because ‘all things work together for the good for those who love God’ (Romans 8: 28). Just like on Calvary, all failure will become development.

Huge, even gigantic human efforts will fail to bring about a healed and wholesome world, but the actions of those who are developing in Agape will ‘renew the face of the earth’ (Ps 104: 30). The Good News we proclaim introduces people to the truly liberating energy of God, our lover. As we grow into the state of being the beloved children of God, we are revealed as the ones for whom creation is ‘waiting with eager longing’ (Romans 8: 19).

As St Paul wrote to them, the Church of Corinth was proud of the wonderful charisms of healing and prophecy and teaching that they were experiencing. How much more would they have fulfilled their mission if they had put Agape at the top of the wish list for divine gifts! It seems that many of them failed to grasp this deepest teaching of Paul, because some forty years later, the fourth pope, St Clement of Rome, wrote them a long letter once more urging them to set aside their divisions. The human heart so often focuses on minimal aspirations rather than daring to hope. I believe that, in our strange time, God is calling us to focus more urgently on the highest path to growth, Agape. In his poem A Sleep of Prisoners, Christopher Fry expresses it as follows:

The human heart can go the lengths of God…
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.

 Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.  

The time we live in is enormously important in the process of salvation. Nature and history cry out increasingly and urgently for the human exploration into God. That urgency has been infused into us by God. The heart of the Trinity has opened and burns with desire for union with us.

What Agape is not

           In our frenzied world of today, a new industry of wellness is emerging. To counteract the obsessive use of media and the hurried pursuit of goals, various ways of stilling ourselves and allowing our souls to breathe are flourishing. These are healthy and helpful, and certainly better than using drugs or alcohol. They might prepare us for contemplation, but mostly they seek to balance our selves so that we can be more in control. They are human techniques that lead us back to our selves. Agape leads us to the Father.

It grieves me to see how some Catholic schools embrace these methods, because it is evidence of how we have forsaken the habit of introducing our children to the great tradition of Christian contemplation. Yet I have seen a school staff struck with wonder when the children of a whole primary school assembly went into deep stillness and contemplation. We offer our children the notions of the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, but we should start with Agape. Jesus says of children: ‘Let them come to me, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs’. I would rather have a whole system of guiding people in holiness and the knowledge of God than the most impressive school system. The opinion that I have just expressed implies a revolution in our approach to education in our part of the world which would demand courage and dedication if it were put into practice, but is it not the reason why our Father has sent us into the vineyard?

‘The Spirit breathes where he will’ (John 3:6)

           Throughout my priestly life, I have been privileged to encounter souls that have been led into deep devotion through many paths such as Eucharistic Adoration, the rosary, praying in tongues and the celebration of the Eucharist, and also through suffering or arduous toil patiently endured. As they have matured, they have become leaven in the dough of this needy world. The lovers of God are all around us, usually hidden, but radiating Agape. I cannot draw a map of how the Holy Spirit flows, but I am sure there is an imperative need to give much more Church time to nurturing the ambition for this highest gift. From Agape all other Church outreaches should flow, and would flow wonderfully. 

The Sacraments of Reconciliation and Marriage

A greater emphasis on Agape can throw light on some of our current problems in Catholic practice such as the reluctance of people to avail themselves of the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Marriage. Our practice of the Sacrament of Confession often focuses on human motivation by the cold examination of sins and their opposing virtues to elicit sorrow and a firm desire of amendment. This is necessary in cases of deeply mortal sin. Normally, though, it should be where priest and penitent exercise the sacred art of discerning the movement of God’s Spirit in the soul of the person being reconciled. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the gracious touch of God for one who is earnestly laying bare their poverty of spirit, to encourage them and draw them more deeply into the kingdom of God.

Reconciliation should be a supremely rich encounter with Agape. The poor woman in the Gospel, who was publicly humiliated as her adultery was cruelly publicised by vicious plotters, did not need stoning, she needed to encounter the divinely loving gaze of the one writing on the ground (John 8: 1-11). Only then would she be set on the path towards sinning no more. The paralysed man lowered through the roof by his friends experienced that same infinite love as Jesus told him his sins were forgiven. It gave him overwhelming relief which contributed to the loosening of his seized-up limbs (Mt 9:1–8). I think the greatest surprise for both these people was the realisation that this person understands me; he is like me; he has been through these temptations himself and overcome them, and his love radiates the love of the Father of light who cherishes me and has invincible faith in me.

We read in 1 Corinthians 13

‘Love is patient, is kind, does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things’.

Do we see this only as a check-list of virtues for us to aspire to? Or do we see this as a description of God himself? The woman accused of adultery and the paralysed man caught a wonderful glimpse of the loving God in the eyes of Christ. They encountered the Father who ‘keeps no account of wrongs’, and ‘is always ready to excuse, to trust and to hope’ (1 Corinthians 13: 6) in them. The true healing and strengthening of their ‘innermost selves’ (Ephesians 3: 16) had started. The Sacrament of Reconciliation should be prepared for and celebrated in the firm belief that it is another step along the road to perfection.

Similarly, how different a Christian marriage becomes if the couple seek Agape together! The lives of such couples as Saints Louis and Zelie Martin, the parents of St Therese shine out as examples of what the Sacrament of Marriage really achieves. Their faithful love and holiness produced daughters who were saints, one of whom is a Doctor of the Church, a supreme teacher of holiness. Why does our marriage preparation stress human relationships and fail to enlighten couples about what happens to their love when they together seek the face of God above all else? 

‘Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on his righteousness, and all these other things will be given you as well” (Matthew 6: 33)

I wrote elsewhere in this chapter that the transformation (of our lives through Agape) begins in the heart, and only gradually penetrates into our words and deeds. St Catherine of Siena puts it like this:

‘Truly the Soul’s being united with and transformed into him [God] is like fire consuming the dampness in logs. Once the logs are heated through and through, the fire burns and changes them into itself, giving them its own colour and warmth and power. It is just so with us when we look at our Creator and his boundless charity (Agape). We begin to experience the heat of self-knowledge – which consumes all the dampness of our selfish love for ourselves. As the heat increases, we throw ourselves with blazing desire into God’s measureless goodness, which we discover within our very selves. We are then sharing in his warmth and in his power’.

Physical fire consumes and annihilates. The fire of the Holy Spirit does not; it matures and enhances our true selves. The adherents of some religions seek to lose their selves in the ultimate reality of universal consciousness. For Christians, eternal life is all about becoming our true selves through harmonious and full relationships and interplay with God and all creation.

Jesus said: ‘Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent’ (John 17: 3). When the Holy Spirit works in us through Agape, we are already wrapped in the dynamic of eternal life here on earth. That is the ‘power from on high’ (Lk 23; 49), the deluge which Jesus told his disciples to faithfully await; that alone is the fuel for the commission he gave them to transform the world.

‘Our struggle is… against …the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’ (Ephesians 6: 12).

This third phase of the Church, the third phase of the spiritual revolution which God is gradually conducting in this world, comes as many fruits of the Spirit are ripening. Countries which have heard the Gospel are experiencing peoples’ claiming the right to determine their own destiny, and, as we see in the Putin/Ukraine conflict, those who have usurped power for too long are reacting with brutality. Yet the poor and the meek of neighbouring countries opened their doors to the mothers and children of the conflict. Churches frequently became the focus of practical help. Political leaders were seen visiting services of prayer. At the same time, worried people watch, sensing the dimension of the sacred which, in their comfortable prosperity, they have neglected.

The false optimism of western prosperity with its neglect of the poor is yielding to unease and an opening of eyes to the reality of evil. Those who saw the world through rose tinted glasses are becoming dismayed, and those who claimed the moral high ground while scorning those who disagreed are discovering that both their attitudes and those of their opponents are far from answering the deepest yearnings of humanity. We are entering a time when those countries which have blithely, even methodically, thrown out the message of Christ are going to become more earnest in seeking authenticity. Christianity itself is facing up to and dealing with problems within itself which it has evaded. The stage is being set by God for the Church, renewed through deepening its members’ holiness, to offer afresh the message of God’s love and salvation.

Political pundits hurry to define the near future as a ‘new cold war’, but the children of God should see it as a special time in the progress of the spiritual warfare Jesus came to cast upon the earth. The millions of members of the Royal Priesthood should not be captivated by the preachers of dread and futility, but become renewed in the vigour of the Spirit. Maybe we have to resurrect an old word, and recognise that we have to become more deeply devout. That word places the emphasis primarily on seeking the face of the Father in contemplation, from which authentic actions for peace and love will flow. These actions are the ‘spiritual sacrifices’, the acts of loving service among which prayer and the faithful fulfilling of small duties are the biggest part. It is not major strategies which are the main weapons in the armoury of the children of God. We fire bullets of faithfulness, seldom missiles. God looks after the strategies.

Most of today’s wars and conflicts are about securing energy resources to enable people’s life styles to prosper. For us Christians, our energy comes from faith, hope and Agape, powers which God gives to those who ‘worship in spirit and in truth’ (John 4: 23-24) . In today’s many outbreaks of war and violence, the distortion of truth through propaganda is rife. But there is also an alarming eruption of truth distortion in all areas of life. Here again the spiritual warfare with Satan is coming to a head. Polarisation and hatred are weighing down heavily on civilisations that thought themselves advanced and sophisticated. All over the world the dissensions of the early Church of Corinth are being repeated. St Paul’s remedy is just as urgently to be sought today: to ‘be ambitious’ for the ‘way that is better than any’: that is Agape. As we Christians become transformed and gently permeate our world with the fruits of the Spirit, this current critical battle in the spiritual warfare will be won.

‘Not on this mountain nor in Jerusalem’ (John 4: 21)

The Samaritan woman that Jesus met at the well questioned where true worship is centred. He replied that it is not in a place but in each mind and heart. So we find that Jesus, during his ministry, ‘taught his disciples’ (Mark 9:31). His teaching opened people’s minds, to know the truth about God. That gives rise to ‘worship in truth’ (John 4: 23-24). But the knowledge of God cannot stay in the mind. It is only the key to opening the door of the heart to ‘worship in spirit’. ‘That is the kind of worshipper God wants’. Jesus was talking about Agape.

The harvest of love

Jesus told us ‘when you see me you see the Father’ (John 14: 9). Wherever he went, people instinctively sensed Agape, the love of the Father. So wondrous was the healing personality of Jesus, and so compelling his words that people dropped what they were doing and flocked to him. Their hunger for God moved him to infinite zeal and compassion. Listen to Jesus’ reaction as he reflects on the multitudes he attracted:

‘And when he saw the crowds he felt sorry for them because they were harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest"’ (Mt 9: 36-38).

A more profound ambition for the divine gift of Agape would dispel much of the confusion we see in the Church today. 
  [1] Cf Eph 4:23-24