Love of the three Divine persons for man
“Going, therefore teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”—Matthew 28:19
St. Leo has said that the nature of God is, by its very essence, goodness itself. Deus cujus natura bonitas—“God whose nature is goodness.” Now goodness naturally diffuses itself. Bonum est sui diffusivum—“Good is self-diffusive.” And experience shows us that men of a good heart are full of love for all, and desire to share with everyone the goods they enjoy. God, being infinite goodness, is all love toward us, his creatures. Hence St. John calls him love itself, charity itself. “God is charity” (1 John 4:8). And therefore he ardently desires to make us partakers of his own happiness.
Faith teaches us how much the three Divine Persons have done out of love for man, to enrich him with heavenly gifts. When Jesus Christ said to his apostles, “Teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” he wished them not only to instruct the Gentiles in the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, but also to teach them the love which the adorable Trinity bears to man. Today, then, I intend to set before you for your consideration: first, the love shown to us by the Father in our creation; second, the love of the Son in our redemption; and third, the love of the Holy Ghost in our sanctification.
First Point.—The love shown to us by the Father in our creation.
1. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn thee, taking pity on thee” (Jer. 31:3). My son, says the Lord, I have loved you from eternity, and through love for you I have shown you mercy by drawing you out of nothing. Hence, beloved Christians, of all those who love you, God has been your first lover. Your parents were the first to love you on this earth; but they loved you only after they had come to know you. God, however, loved you before you had any being at all. Before your father or mother was born, God loved you; yes, even before the world was created, he loved you.
And how long before creation did God love you? Perhaps for a thousand years, or for a thousand ages? There is no use counting years or ages: God loved you from eternity. “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” As long as he has been God, he has loved you; as long as he has loved himself, he has loved you. The thought of this love made St. Agnes the Virgin exclaim, “I am claimed already by another lover.” When creatures asked for her heart, she answered: No; I cannot prefer you to my God. He has been the first to love me; it is only just, then, that he should hold the first place in my affections.
2. Thus, brethren, God has loved you from eternity, and out of pure love he has chosen you from among so many men whom he could have created in your place; but he has left them in their nothingness and has brought you into being and set you in the world. For love of you he has made so many other beautiful creatures, that they might serve you and remind you of the love he has borne you and of the gratitude you owe him. “Heaven and earth,” says St. Augustine, “and all things tell me to love you.” When the saint beheld the sun, the stars, the mountains, the sea, the rivers, they all seemed to speak to him and to say: Augustine, love God; for he has created us for you, that you might love him.
When the Abbé de Rancé, the founder of La Trappe, looked upon the hills, the springs, or the flowers, he used to say that all these creatures reminded him of the love which God had borne him. St. Teresa, too, used to say that these creatures reproached her with her ingratitude to God. And St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, while she held some lovely flower or fruit in her hand, would feel her heart wounded with divine love, as though by an arrow, and would say within herself: Then my God has thought from all eternity of creating this flower, this fruit, for love of me, that I might love him!
3. Moreover, seeing us condemned to hell in punishment for our sins, the Eternal Father, out of love for us, sent his Son upon earth to die on a cross, in order to redeem us from hell and bring us with himself into Paradise. “God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son” (John 3:16)—a love which the Apostle calls an excess of love. “For his exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together in Christ” (Eph. 2:4–5).
4. See, too, the special love which God has shown you in bringing you into the world in a Christian land, in the bosom of the true Church, which is the Catholic Church. How many are born among the pagans, among the Jews, among the Mahometans, or among the heretics, and all of these are lost! Consider that, compared with their great number, only a few—not even a tenth part of mankind—have the happiness of being born where the true faith reigns; and among that small number, God has chosen you.
Oh, what an immense gift is this gift of faith! How many millions of souls among the unbelievers are deprived of the sacraments, of sermons, of the example of good companions, and of all the other helps to salvation that we possess in our Church! And the Lord resolved to grant us all these great helps without any merit on our part—indeed, foreseeing our demerits; for when he thought of creating us and bestowing these favors upon us, he already foresaw our sins and the injuries we would commit against him.
Second Point.—The love which the Son of God has shown us in our redemption.
5. Adam, our first father, sins by eating the forbidden fruit, and the wretched man is condemned to eternal death, together with all of us, his descendants. Seeing the whole human race lost, God resolved to send a Redeemer to save mankind. Who shall come to accomplish this redemption? An angel, a seraph? No; the Son of God himself, supreme and true God, equal to the Father, offers himself to come upon earth, to take human flesh there, and to die for the salvation of men.
Oh, the wonder! Oh, the prodigy of divine love! Man, writes St. Fulgentius, despises God and separates himself from God; and God, out of the love he bears him, comes upon earth to seek out rebellious man. Homo Deum contemnens, a Deo discessit: Deus hominem diligens, ad homines venit—“Man, despising God, withdrew from God; God, loving man, came to men” (Sermon on the Nativity of Christ). Since we could not go to the Redeemer, says St. Augustine, he did not disdain to come to us. Quia ad mediatorem venire non poteramus, ipse ad nos venire dignatus est—“Because we could not come to the Mediator, he deigned to come to us.” And why did Jesus Christ resolve to come to us? According to the same holy Doctor, it was to make us know how great is the love he bears us. “Christ came, that man might know how much God loves him.”
6. Hence the Apostle writes, “The goodness and kindness of God our Saviour appeared” (Titus 3:5). The Greek text reads: Singularis Dei erga homines apparuit amor—“The singular love of God toward men appeared.” Commenting on this text, St. Bernard says that before God appeared on earth made man, men could not arrive at a knowledge of how great the divine goodness was; therefore the Eternal Word took human flesh, that, appearing as man, this goodness might be known by men. Priusquam appareret humanitas, latebat benignitas; sed unde tanta agnosci poterat? Venit in carne, ut, apparente humanitate, agnosceretur benignitas—“Before his humanity appeared, his kindness lay hidden; but from where could so great a thing be known? He came in the flesh, so that, his humanity appearing, his kindness might be recognized” (Sermon i on the Epiphany).
And what greater love and goodness could the Son of God show us than to become man—O God!—to become a worm like us, in order not to see us lost? What wonder it would be to see a prince become a worm to save the worms of his kingdom! And what shall we say at the sight of a God made man like us, to deliver us from eternal death? “The Word was made flesh” (John 1:14). A God made flesh! If faith did not assure us of it, who could ever believe it?
Behold, then, as St. Paul says, a God all but reduced to nothing. “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and in habit found as a man” (Phil. 2:7). The Greek text, instead of exinanivit, reads evacuavit; by this the Apostle shows us that he who was filled with divine majesty and power willed to lower himself so far as to take on the lowly and feeble condition of human nature, assuming the form—that is, the nature—of a servant, and becoming like men even in outward appearance, like any ordinary man, although, as St. Chrysostom observes, he was not a mere man, but man and God. Hearing a deacon one day sing those words of St. John, “And the Word was made flesh,” St. Peter of Alcantara gave a great cry, was rapt out of himself, and in his ecstasy flew through the air to the altar of the Most Holy Sacrament.
7. But the Incarnate Word, this God enamored of us, was not content with becoming flesh for love of man; he willed, moreover, to live among us as the last, the lowest, and most afflicted of men, as the prophet had already foretold of him: “There is no beauty in him, nor comeliness: and we have seen him despised, and the most abject of men, a man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:2–3). A man of sorrows, yes; for the life of Jesus Christ was a life utterly full of sorrows. Virum dolorum—“A man of sorrows.” He was a man made on purpose to be tormented always with sorrows; and such was the whole life of our Redeemer, from his birth until his death.
8. And because he had come to make himself loved by man—as he declared in those words, “I am come to cast fire on the earth; and what will I, but that it be kindled?” (Luke 12:49)—he willed at the close of his life to give us the greatest signs and proofs of the love he bore us. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (John 13:1). Hence he not only humbled himself to die for us, but chose for himself the most bitter and shameful of all deaths. “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8).
Among the Jews, whoever died crucified was held accursed and reviled by all. “He is accursed of God that hangeth on a tree” (Deut. 21:23). And so our Redeemer willed to end his life dying in shame upon a cross, in the midst of a tempest of ignominies and sorrows, as he had foretold through David: “I am come into the depth of the sea, and a tempest hath overwhelmed me” (Ps. 68:3).
9. “In this,” says St. John, “we have known the charity of God, because he hath laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). And how could God have shown us his love more fully than by laying down his divine life for us? Or how is it possible to behold a God dead upon the cross for love of us and not love him? “For the charity of Christ presseth us” (2 Cor. 5:14). By these words St. Paul warns us that it is not so much what Jesus Christ has done and suffered for our salvation, as the love he has shown us in suffering and dying for us, that obliges and compels us to love him.
He has died for all, the same Apostle adds, that each of us may live no longer for himself, but only for that God who has given his life out of love for us. “Christ died for all, that they also who live may not now live to themselves, but unto him who died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:15). And to win our love entirely, after having given his life for us, he willed moreover to leave us himself as the food of our souls, when he said: “Take ye and eat: this is my body” (Matt. 26:26). Had faith not assured us of it, who could ever believe it? But of this other prodigy of divine love in the Holy Sacrament I shall speak on the following Sunday. Let us pass now to a brief consideration of the third point.
Third Point.—The love shown us by the Holy Ghost in our sanctification.
10. The Eternal Father was not content with giving us his Son Jesus Christ, that he might save us by his death; he willed to give us also the Holy Ghost, that he might dwell in our souls and keep them ever inflamed with holy love. And Jesus himself, despite all the ill-treatment he received on earth from men, forgetting their ingratitude, after he had ascended into heaven, sent us the Holy Ghost from there, that with his holy flames this divine Spirit might kindle in us divine charity and sanctify our souls.
Hence, when the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles in the upper room, he willed to appear in the form of tongues of fire. “And there appeared to them parted tongues, as it were of fire” (Acts 2:3). And so the Church bids us pray: “We beseech thee, O Lord, that thy Spirit may inflame us with that fire which the Lord Jesus Christ sent upon the earth, and vehemently willed to be enkindled.” This is the holy fire that has inflamed the saints to do great things for God, to love their most cruel enemies, to long for contempt, to strip themselves of the riches and honors of the world, and even to embrace torments and death with joy.
11. The Holy Ghost is that divine bond which unites the Father with the Son; and he it is who, through love, unites our souls with God. For this is the very effect of love, as St. Augustine says: “Charity is the virtue that joins us to God.” The chains of the world are chains of death, but the bonds of the Holy Ghost are bonds of eternal life, since they unite us with God, who is our true and only life.
12. Let us understand, moreover, that all the lights, the inspirations, the divine calls, and all the good acts we have made in the course of our life—our acts of sorrow for our sins, of confidence in the mercy of God, of love, of resignation—have all been gifts of the Holy Ghost. As the Apostle adds: “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings” (Rom. 8:26). Thus it is the Holy Ghost who even prays for us; for since we do not know the prayers we ought to offer God for our salvation, the Holy Ghost teaches us how to pray.
13. In a word, the whole Most Holy Trinity has labored to show us the love which God bears us, that we may be grateful to him in loving him. “When God loves,” says St. Bernard, “he wishes nothing else than to be loved.” It is only just, then, that we love that God who has been the first to love us, and who has bound us with so many tokens of tenderness to love him. “Let us therefore love God, because God first hath loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Oh, what a great treasure is love! It is an infinite treasure, for love wins for us the friendship of God. “She is an infinite treasure to men: which they that use become the friends of God” (Wis. 7:14). But to gain this treasure, we must detach our heart from the things of earth. “Detach the heart from creatures,” wrote St. Teresa, “and you shall find God.” In a heart full of earth there is no room for divine love. Let us therefore pray to the Lord continually, in our prayers, our Communions, and our visits to the Most Holy Sacrament, that he give us his holy love; for this same love will make us lose our affection for the things of this earth.
“When a house is on fire,” says St. Francis de Sales, “everything within it is thrown out through the windows.” The saint meant that when a soul is inflamed with divine love, of itself it detaches from all created things; and Father Paul Segneri the younger used to say that divine love is a thief that strips us of all earthly affections, and makes us cry out: And what else, O my Lord, do I desire but you alone?
14. “Love is strong as death” (Cant. 8:6). As no created force can resist death when its hour has come, so for a soul that loves God there is no difficulty which love does not overcome. When it is a matter of pleasing the Beloved, love conquers all: sorrows, losses, ignominies. Nihil tam durum quod non amoris igne vincatur—“Nothing is so hard that it is not conquered by the fire of love.” This love made the holy martyrs, while they stood amid torments, upon the racks, and on the burning gridirons, rejoice and thank God for granting them to suffer for love of him. And it made the other saints, where no tyrants were left to torment them, become, to give pleasure to God, their own executioners by fasts, mortifications, and penances.
St. Augustine says that in doing what one loves there is no labor, and if there is, the labor itself is loved. In eo quod amatur aut non laboratur, aut ipse labor amatur—“In what is loved, either there is no labor, or the labor itself is loved.”
Points for Reflection
1. “God has loved you from eternity, and out of pure love he has chosen you from among so many men whom he could have created in your place” (§2)
2. “Detach the heart from creatures, and you shall find God” (§13)
3. “In doing what one loves there is no labor, and if there is, the labor itself is loved” (§14)