The Immediacy of Love

In reflecting on the Memorial of St. Andrew Kim Taegon and St. Paul Chong Hasang and their companions, I recall that from the earliest days of my Christian experience I’ve considered the depth of faith it would take to be able to offer my life in martyrdom. It is truly enough to cause a serious pause in order to take in the sheer love that would make such a sacrifice possible. Each Sunday, in the Eucharist, we are reminded of the selfless gift that represents “no greater love.”

However, the idea of giving one’s life brings up serious questions, as it should. Is the rational mind at work in such instances? Would not the reasonable thing be to save oneself at any cost? Of course, it momentarily crossed my mind how examples of Christian martyrdom might easily be paralleled in the minds of some to the phenomenon of suicide martyrdom that we see common in terrorist attacks, which in no way are a true parallel to what it really means to offer one’s life, even in the remotest sense.  Thus we can lay to rest the notion that suicide killings are rational acts.  They are not and can never be.

What is the ingredient that makes a purely selfless act possible? What lies within the realm of possible experience that witnesses to the rationality of the experience of God? What bridges the gap between the world of seeming impossibilities and the world of concrete experiences in which we live? What is it that would cause even giving one’s life not to fall to the irrationality of violence?

But I shall show you a still more excellent way…

The way of love is the great conqueror of each seemingly impossible situation that this life might offer. It is through love that the power of this world, the devil, is to be conquered to the degree that a new future history for humankind will unfold. It is also in reflecting on love as it is experienced in the world of daily living, that is, as the most basic and primary of all human experiences, that we will discover the connection between God and rationality. We begin by identifying all that we are able to experience of God, in a way that does not require a secondary mediation, within the context of love. Jesus Christ, related to as a human subject sharing the subjective experience common in humanity, serves to bridge the gap that separates immediate human experience from God. Jesus brings God into the field of human possibility with immediacy—it is the immediacy of love.

Love offers us the path of self-giving as a means by which we have access to God. Of course the ultimate act of self-sacrifice is in giving one’s life for another. Still, we must understand that giving in the sense of martyrdom—if it is truly in love—never involves taking life. True sacrificial love believes that in the end God will win even if appearances seem to indicate otherwise. Mere appearances do not represent the rational, and what truly appears as real may be verified by its being shared between persons as a thing that immediately witnesses to the presence of love.

Comments

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True sacrificial love believes that in the end God will win even if appearances seem to indicate otherwise.

Amen. :-) He will.

Also, a paragraph from something M. Scott Peck wrote chilled me to the core.. it said we likely wouldn't be called to sacrifice our life for our belief, but that it wasn't assured because the Church has often been nourished on martryed blood. That sorta balanced out the great gift of his writing in an earlier paragraph, of how the Lord is purposely so intimate, to be placed on our tongues, to mingle His Body and Blood with ours, to even act as Food, to go deep within to bless all inwardly.

I've often wondered if I'd recant my faith in light of a sword or a shotgun. As I marveled at that little Cassie who stayed true to Christ at Colombine, I thought, with the greatest dismay and foreboding, that I would not recant my faith, ever, because it denies Him, denies His love. And a little child shall lead them..