This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.
Michael Commane
If you were asked to write a 500-word essay on the the word love what would you say? Or indeed if you were asked to write another 500 words on what the word God means for you, how do you think it would work out?
The Gospel in the liturgy for Sunday October 25 tells us there are two great commandments, to love God and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. And just the previous Thursday in the first reading at Mass St Paul tells us that the love of Christ is beyond all knowledge.
Much food for thought there. And in theology class fadó fadó I remember sitting up in my seat when I heard a lecturer saying that God is love. Doesn’t that mean that the two words are interchangeable?
It’s so easy to misuse words and maybe especially words that we regularly use. And sometimes the words we use never fully capture what we are trying to say.
The two words love and God are enormous in their meaning and I think it’s true to say that we seldom if ever get a handle on either of them. I was heartened to read that St Paul said that the love of Christ is beyond all knowledge. In one sentence we get a hint of the difficulty in talking about God or love.
It’s custom and practice at Christian weddings that the readings at the Mass speak about love, the love of God and our love for one another. Couples profess their undying love to each other. It’s a lovely idea but I’m back scratching my head, just a little, and asking myself what exactly love is. The smart answer might be that we know what it is when we see or experience it for ourselves. And of course there are all types of love.
I like to say that all acts of love give us the tiniest of inklings into the love of God.
Oscar Wilde, famous for his incisive quips, sometimes maybe too incisive, advises us never to love anyone who treats us as if we were ordinary.
It’s clever and makes good sense. And again, he’s alluding to the extraordinariness of that word love.
A friend of mine who was a locomotive driver with Irish Rail would often discuss with me that there is no such thing as a purely altruistic act. In other words everything we do, we do it in some way or other to satisfy ourselves. Again, even that idea adds to the mystery of the love word.
When I hear people saying they do not believe in God my immediate reaction is to ask them and ask myself is it far too big a jump to say there is no God. I say that once we believe in love, then can we not say we believe in God?
Every day in the hospital where I work I see people carrying out acts of love. Only last week I saw a member of staff going to extraordinary lengths to help a person walk. You might say, but that’s their job. Yes, so it is but that doesn’t make it any less loving.
In these dark days of Covid every act of kindness spells love and we believe God is love and love is God. It makes much more sense to see Christianity as a living reality rather than a dogma of rules and regulations.
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