Michael Amaladoss

The title ‘Love of God’ is ambiguous. It is not clear whether it means the love of God for us or our love for God. Actually we do not really have to choose because both are mutually involving each other. As a matter of fact love is a dialogue. The initiative is God’s. It is God who loves us first. Our love for God can only be a response. The process starts with God.

In the Bible
God love for us humans and our world starts with creation. The creation story in the book of Genesis in the Bible does not speak about the love of God as a motive for creation. It says: “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen 1:27) But it continues, in the second story of creation, that God creates the woman from a rib of the man and concludes, “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (Gen 2:24) This clinging is obviously an expression and experience of love. Having been created in God’s image they witness to God’s love. This principle will be highlighted much later at the Second Vatican Council in the document on Missionary Activity (1965). It says that God’s plan for the Church “flows from the ‘fountain-like love’, the love of God the Father. As the principle without principle from whom the Son is generated and from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds through the Son, God in his great and merciful kindness freely creates us and moreover, graciously calls us to share in his life and glory. He generously pours out, and never ceases to pour out, his divine goodness, so that he who is the creator of all things might at last become ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28), thus simultaneously assuring his own glory and our happiness.” (Ad Gentes, 2) God’s love is shown in his sharing his own life with the humans.

God’s love for the people he had created is shown in the many stories in the Old Testament. One image that is used frequently to describe his relationship to the people is the relationship of the bridegroom to his bride. The bride, of course, is often unfaithful, going after false gods, often of her own making. This nayaka-nayaki bhava will be celebrated in the Song of Songs: “How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful.” (Song of Songs, 4:1)

God love for God’s people is also finds expression in the prophets. It takes feminine overtones. God becomes motherly. God says through the mouth of Hosea: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” (Hos 11:1) Again through Isaiah: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” (Is 49:15) God’s motherly love is highlighted in the Eastern Syria tradition in the Odes of Solomon. Here is just a sample from Ode 19.

A cup of milk was offered to me,
And I drank it in the sweetness of delight in the Lord.
2 The Son is the cup,
And the Father is He who was milked;
And the Holy Spirit is She who milked Him;
3 Because His breasts were full,
And it was undesirable that His milk should be
ineffectually released.

In Jesus Christ
From this relationship arises the love commandment: Love God with all your heart and mind and love your neighbour as yourself. Jesus illustrates this with the story of the Good Samaritan. (cf. Lk 10:25-37) In the Gospels God’s love for humanity is manifested in Jesus. John says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16) God love is shown by Jesus in his miracles and exorcisms.

Jesus also insists that to love is to forgive. Love and forgiveness are two sides of one coin. With reference to a sinful woman who washes his feet with her tears, he says: “I tells you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” (Lk 7:47) He illustrates this attitude of God by the parables of the lost son, the lost sheep and the lost coin. (cf. Lk 15) As he is leaving this earth, Jesus communicates this power of forgiveness to all the disciples: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me so I send you.” When he has said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any they are retained.” (Jn 20:21-23) Paul will reiterate this lesson later. “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all clothe yourself with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Col 3:12-14) The prayer ‘Our Father’ taught to his disciples by Jesus underlines the link between God forgiving us and we forgiving the others: “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Mt 6:12)

Loving God in the Other(s)
Jesus also tells the disciples that their love for God must be show in their love for the others. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” (Jn 15:9) “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Jn 15:13) Jesus illustrates this by dying on the cross for them. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he love them to the end.” (Jn 13:1) Jesus tells them: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (Jn 13: 34) Jesus illustrates what it means to love by washing their feet (service), by sharing bread and wine with them (sharing) and by giving his life for them on the cross (self gift). God therefore is loved in the others. “They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” (Jn 14:21) Love becomes a bond that unites all of them. “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” (Jn 17:21)

The disciples of Jesus, especially John, learn this lesson of Jesus and communicate it to Jesus’ followers. John writes: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” (1 Jn 4:7-11) “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (1 Jn 4:16) Paul speaks of the fruits of the Spirit that builds community. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Gal 5:22-23)

The Christian Tradition
In the early Christian tradition the reality of salvation is understood as the manifestation of God’s love for the humans. The Greek Fathers said that God becomes human in Jesus in order to makes the humans gods. They spoke of salvation as a process of divinization through which God shares God’s life with us. The Latin tradition puts the emphasis rather on the cross, which can be seen as the self-gift of Jesus dying and rising to new life and sharing that new life with us. The cross then becomes the symbol of love and self gift. But unfortunately ideas of punishment, expiation and satisfaction enter into the understanding of Jesus’ death on the cross. The new life in the resurrection is not sufficiently emphasized.

Many of the mystics in the West go back to the imagery of the Song of the Songs expression the love between God and the believer as an exchange of love between the bridegroom and the bride. Many examples can be given. I quote here only the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross. It is said to be modeled on the Song of Songs. The bride sings:

In the inner cellar
Of my Beloved have I drunk; and when I went forth
Over all the plain
I knew nothing,
And lost the flock I followed before.

There he gave me his breasts,
There he taught me the science full of sweetness,
And there I gave to Him
Myself without reserve;
There I promised to be his bride. (XXVI-XXVII)

St. Ignatius of Loyola concludes his month-long Spiritual Exercises with a Contemplation to Obtain Love. He says that God loves us and shows us that love not only by his many gifts, but also concretely in being present and operative in the world. This love of God inspires us to love and surrender in return. The experience of Ignatius is often described as ‘finding God in all things.’

In the Indian Context
While the predominant experience in Christianity is one of an ‘I – Thou’ relationship of love, a certain non-dual or advaitic relationship is not absent.
Jesus says “The Father and I are one.” (Jn 10:30) The scripture scholars will explain this as a al unity. This may be because they have no advaitic background and do not know how to explain the relationship except in al terms. On the other hand, when Jesus prays to the Father saying: “That they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” (Jn 17:21), this unity looks more than al.

St. Paul, on the other hand, sees the whole of humanity as the body of Christ. (cf. 1 Cor 12:12-31) This is certainly reminiscent of Ramanuja.
In the Christian tradition there have been mystics like Meister Eckhart who speaks an advaitic language. Of course he belongs to a period before the Catholic-Protestant separation.
For we are to be changed into Him and made One with Him, so that what is His shall be ours and what is ours, His: our heart and His are to be one heart; our body and his, one body. So, too, it shall be with our senses, wills, thoughts, faculties, and members: they are all to be transported into Him, so that we feel with Him and are made aware of Him in every part of body and soul…. His is the only treasure with which you will be contented or satisfied. (Talks of Instruction, 20)

I have spoken before of emptiness, that is, of innocence, to the effect that the more innocent and poor [empty] the soul is, the less it has to do with creatures, the emptier of things that are not God, the more surely it takes to God, gets into Him and is made One with Him, itself becoming God. (Book of Divine Consolation, 2)

In modern times Swami Abhishiktananda spoke of having had the advaitic experience towards the end of his life. He used to attribute it to Jesus, but finally experienced it himself.

Michael Amaladoss, S.J.