Rev. David Meconi, S.J. - November 3 - 2016

join me in welcoming honor mikoni will speak on West blogs compete san agustin on charity well dr. Murphy didn't say is that I taught his lovely daughter Julia in theology 1000 so if she ends up a heretic it's my fault is this can you hear me in the back all right I need to read this talk so I'm just going to stand here a couple days before my mom died four years ago I went into a room at home and her eyes were filled with tears and I said mom are you okay and she said no I said are you in pain she said no I said what's wrong she said I'm disappointing Jesus and being the priests son of course the youngest of eight kids I said mom you want to go to confession again and being a good Michigan woman she looked at me she said no you idiot I said all right that's no what's wrong she says I'm disappointing Jesus because I don't want to leave you guys and bye guys she met me of course but notice what my mom did at the end of her life a faithful woman a daily communicant for decades she thought that if she was going to impress the Creator she couldn't let on how much his creation meant to her she had this false understanding of God that if she found separation from her own children and her world that that would cause him pain she had this idea that she should be living for God and God alone and this is something that I found worth mulling over the last few years and in August and as we can for so many things an answer is available what did my mom ultimately mean by love did she think she could love God and not love those whom God loves did you really believe that the only proper object of her affection should be the trinity tonight I want to look at the writings of st. Augustine to help us unravel this important question that really is on all of our journeys the first question I want to ask I can get this to work there we go what is the proper nature of love must one let their loves compete against one another so as to ensure that the highest love of one's life is not offended would God really be offended for my mom loving us Levine d her family are there in fact one or many types of love do we need to distinguish between an authentic and assimilated charity and again for you undergrads I think this is a really important point that agustin is going to teach us and I think it's always easy to think there's a salvific kind of love that you experience in religion and the sacraments and the church and then there's this kind of mundane love that you have for your friends and for your family and for a Gustin he's not going to let these loves compete so if you need to leave early there's the there's the tag line for the night alright our main interlocutor st. Agustin suffered from this early on while still immersed in the pursuits of his career as an orator as a famous writer ition Augustine of Hippo coldly sent away the mother of his only son in order to pursue a more noble love he says agostino an idiot that this point of his life but like most of us he grew up and produced a theological vision which tonight can teach us that eternal charity begins only with one's natural affections and that in our seemingly mundane love of neighbor begins our eternal love of God Aurelius Agustin was born to a Christian mother and a staunchly paid Roman pagan father and to goste in Numidia you can see that there in what is today algeria in the year 354 thanks to his innovative writing and the composition of his confessions the highlights as well as the low points of his well chronicled life are known by most Agustin excelled in his studies he won many prizes for Latin oratory went on to teach rhetoric he joined a new age cult and through those connections around the year around the age of 30 he found himself employed by the Emperor himself up in Milan surrounded by all the carnality the Western capital could offer no stranger to the lures of the world Agustin himself admits that he fell headlong into empty loves while selling the service of my tongue in the market of speechifying but while yeah that's Agustin crying there none of these by the way are actual photos I once had a student asked me if Justin were scared going through life known as the martyr I once had an undergrad asked me where Orient are was that's where the three kings are from right while employed his Imperial orator a kind of head of propaganda for the Roman Emperor Agustin also came into contact with the great bishop of Milan Ambrose who introduced him to the true meaning of the Christian scriptures and assisted him in the reading of platonic philosophy and on the Easter Vigil of 386 Agustin presented himself and his teenage son for Holy Baptism thereafter he returns to Africa to begin the nearly 40-year career as priest and bishop a widely prolific theological author in fact Agustin left us over 5.4 million words I figured out that this is a light to being department chair Bishop and producing a 300 page book every year for just over 40 years the guy didn't sleep all right this is before red bull he was in love with the Lord in love with his people tonight let's examine and focus on two main areas of this massive corpus the first we shall see how love fuses otherwise spirit individuals into a living unity this is the goal of love to unite lover and beloved and what Augusta names the todas christus the whole Christ we're in God Himself dwells and can therefore be found in those he loves and secondly we turn to agustín's reading the first John 48 the god is love deus caritas s and see how it involved over the decades as he matured as a pastor of souls less enabling him to assert rather daringly so that if God is love then love must also be God third we conclude by appreciating the implications of agustín's very liberal view of love namely what concrete criteria has you put into place so as to be able to discern between God is love and other fictions of charity that we all know too well control fear lust manipulation that is how do we know we are loving rightly or wrongly augustins theology of love is characterized by two very important images motion out of oneself and a transformative identification into the beloved first love begins by coming out of oneself imagined by Agustin and various metaphors as a weight drawing myself into another my weight is my love he famously rights but he also describes love as feet wings heart in hands the first instance of love for Agustin is always ecstatic it takes you out of yourself secondly love not only moves us toward the other in a way it becomes the other ecstasy and eros take us out of each other into transformation Agustin asks what is every love does it not consist of the will to become one with the object which it loves and when it reaches its object becomes one with it this is perhaps the most important question any of us can ask what do I love what ought I to love this is the essential inquiry because it alone determines not only ones to care but our destiny as well this is the most beautiful and poetic aspect of augustinian charity it is a moment all lovers have known it is the Inklings charles williams to his wife Mary when questioning his care for her he said love you I am you he must have been in deep trouble to write that but what a beautiful image orts Katherine's affirmation to Nellie and oddly Bronte's withering Heights that her love for Heathcliff has changed her forever and that while my love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods time will change it I'm well aware as winter changes of the trees but my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath a source of little little visible delight but necessary Nelly I am Heathcliff he's always always in my mind not as a pleasure any more than I'm always a pleasure to myself but as my own being so don't talk of our separation again it is impracticable while less while a less Victorian age like our own may dismiss such pros as overly saccharine or romantically utopian one can see the same dynamic throughout the best and oldest of Christian literature think back to one of the oldest homilies we have preached probably around the Year 120 in modern-day Syria on Holy Saturday we hear a bishop describe Christ descent into hell to retrieve our first parents the Lord descends holding his victorious weapon the cross when Adam the first created man sees him he strikes his breast and terror and calls out my lord be with you notice Adams the priest here the Lord be with you and Christ says to Adam and with your spirit he's all of us grasping Adams hand he raises him up saying awake Oh sleeper and arise from the dead and I Christ shall give you light for I am your God for your sake became your son who for you and all your descendants now speak in command with authority those in prison come forth and those in darkness have light and those who sleep rise I come and you awake sleeper I've not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld but arise from the dead arise old man work of my hands arise you who are fashioned in my image rise let us go hence for you are in me and I am in you and together we form one undivided person that's a Halloween but notice what love does it identifies itself with its beloved this is ancient Christian thought that God became human so we could become like God you notice that with people to spend a lot of time together if you kids ever told your parents know you and Mom you're just alike you know you see it with dog owners they start looking like their pooch after a while same haircut same sweater vest you know but the whole point of the Incarnation is that God became like us a we could become like God there's no dividing these loves agustin in the year 407 writes this each person is as his or her loved you love the earth you will be earth do you love God what shall I say will you be God listen to the scriptures I dare not say this on my own then he quotes psalm 81 you are gods and Sons of daughters of the Most High all of you we don't talk this way much anymore but this is really ancient if you're interested in this look at catechism look at the new catechism paragraph 4 60 it's all over the place this is a startling claim that love transforms us either into Earth or into gods but as our both ancient anonymous author as well as st. Augusta new this is the point of the Incarnation that love longs to become like its beloved to form one person out of two and in his perfect charity the son of god became human so humans could become divine this great exchange of nature's God's humanity for our divinity God's weakness for our strength God's poverty for our riches never remains a dry Dogma for Agustin but is most often used as a reflective exercise in his preaching asking his parishioners to look honestly at who they are becoming instead of holding up the world or one sins however as the perfect mirror the Bishop of Hippo holds up the person of Christ before those present and invites them to see their truest worth now however I wonder if we shouldn't have a look at ourselves if we shouldn't think about his body because he is also us after all if he weren't him after all if we weren't him this wouldn't be true when you did it for the least of mind you did it for me if we weren't him this wouldn't be true Saul Saul why are you persecuting me so we too are him because we are his organs we are his body because he is our head because the whole Christ totez christus is both head and body the whole Christ Agustin coined this term around the Year 390 when he started his first long commentary on the book of psalms here in these hundred and fifty songs of Israel's praise Augustine found Christ himself singing praying lamenting and loving his father the words of the psalmist's become Christ's because Christ is the one human whose lips alone can offer true praise the one whose words alone can forgive sinners and the one whose cry from the cross can assure sinners that even their God is near one very strong occurrence of such identification comes early on at Psalm 26 where a Gustin sees and King David's chrismation the anointing of all Israel of all of God's faithful and again don't forget Chris it's related to the word Crisco it's the Anointed One right The Anointed One United us into one body with himself and making us his members so that in him we too are Christ's from this it is obvious that we are the body of Christ all being anointed in him all of us belong to Christ but we too are Christ because in some sets the whole Christ the tone is christus is both head and body the Augustinian whole christ began when the Son of God assumed to himself the fullness of our humanity the new Adam who has we gathered all men and women now into his own self we hear such lines from agustín's Jesus they too are I I am who they are reflecting on such lines we see how a Gustin commits himself to the view that Jesus of Nazareth is also the mystical Messiah who in his perfect humanity has regathered all the exiled children of eden the baptized are now his body continuing his incarnation and his fleshy presence on earth but this is a mutual indwelling Christ in Christian which allows the Lord to be incessantly born toil be persecuted and crucified and even rise each day in his members this is a humbling facet of love the Lord humbly prolongs his incarnation in his members in you over and again the Christ life continues in a baptismal font in an earnest prayer in an act of holy communion god and humanity once again become one now each of the baptized is elevated and transformed to live a divinely adopted childs life enabled through grace to become agustín's phrase another christ an arresting phrase which agustin employees describe this mutual indwelling think of his definition of heaven agustin wrote christians become christ by loving and they become members of Christ's body and in the end there will be one Christ loving himself great book on this by the way you don't have to read it just just buy it this theology of indwelling freeze Agustin from worrying about where this love should start love of God inevitably leads to love of neighbor and love of neighbor therefore is impossible without loving God for without God is the one who unites created persons we cannot truly love one another but grasp outwardly only from our own impoverished cravings or need to control another but without loving another we cannot even say that we truly love God Agustin therefore asks how can that be when you love Christ members when you love Christ members you love Christ when you love Christ you love the Son of God when you love the Son of God you also love the father love then cannot be separated choose for yourself what to love others come to you as a result should you say I love God alone God the Father you're lying if you love you don't love one thing alone but if you love the father you also love the Sun and if you love the Sun who's the head of the church you also love the members the church or so here we have our first real definition I think of how a Gustin understands love de lexie own on supper re potest love cannot be separated due to Augustus insistence that love never terminates exclusively in another but brims over by definition into others love of God and love of neighbor form a more continuous circle than a discardable ladder on which we use creatures to climb to God and then are asked to abandon them once we have attained our divine destination know there are some Christians that think that some saints have letters Teresa of Avila has a letter to a novice that if you really love God the death of your father wouldn't move you to tears sorry she's a saying I'm not but you can see this sometimes in our in our tradition do you know the story of para muchos John cash in the 5th century monk he went over into Syria and North Africa and gained back to France and wrote all these wonderful stories of saints in the east and there's a story about Potter muchos the silent father Latin his wife dies and he and his eight-year-old son want to join the strictest monastery around and so they find themselves in the Egyptian desert and they go to the monastery and the abbot's a little unsure of letting this former married man and his kid into the monastery so to test his obedience he hauls off and just waxed the kid across the face John Cassian writes the father remains unmoved out of his love for Christ and so the app it has all the other monks line up and strike the kid across the face and out of his love for Christ the father says nothing so the final test is two monks hurled the kid off the wall of the monastery ins of the Nile River below being good Christians of course there are two brothers down there who plucked the kid out of the river and bring him back up they're allowed to enter isn't that isn't that story just sick all right but that exists in the Christian tradition and it's something my mom was I think you know tempted with at the end of her life to separate her loves the love of Christ has to be total and exclusive in a way that absorbs and denies any other love where did it gustan get this in his reading the first John 48 very early on in his theological career Agustin was careful to actually separate two kinds of competing loves love of God and love of anything else in his initial work against the Manichean sect the Manichaeans were these fourth century New Age whack jobs he belonged to them for nine years right he asserts that God alone should be loved but this whole world that is all sensible things should be held in contempt this is early Agustin statements like this from the 380s are numerous words of a man seriously wounded by the world a Catholic Christian convert now leery of returning to his former ways remember he's a womanizer he's kind of a drunk he's kind of a you know he took the scenic route to priesthood and sainthood one but who's now found the pearl of great price as unwilling to let it ever again out of his grass he used to live a kind of otherworldly faith that forced him to deny the desires of his heart with the misplaced belief that love of God renders one immune to the vicissitudes of Fortune that could cause heartbreak for a time Agustin had fallen into what my colleague at st. Louis University Eleanor stump wonderful woman called Stern minded Christianity that his newly embrace Christian faith acted as asbestos as protection against the vulnerability and demands of love remember Agustin had lived a very dissolute life he confesses to having struggled with the empty pleasures of carnal lust and worldly Fame in particular he knows he's caused scandal and has led others astray in his late 30s Agustin still seems hesitant to ascribe anything other than the divine nature is worthy of what we could call safely love in 393 a young priest promising theologian or day not even two years is invited to preach to the bishops of North Africa gathered at the Senate of Hippo 393 in his discourse Agustin naturally and easily turns to the topic of God is love and for the first time in his career he looks at first John 48 God his love before these attending bishops Agustin was adamant that the Apostle John wrote that God is love he writes right here sorry the Scriptures do not say love is God but that God is love divinity alone is to be loved he says now imagine the scene the brightest as well as the most mischievous kid in his class Joe returns to his homeland and is asked to address the leading bishops in his recently embraced church for the first time Agustin of Hippo a man who left these shores with a concubine and a small child now both gone went to work for the Emperor at the recommendation of Quintus Arrius Simic asst the leading pagan of his day the enemy of the great Ambrose Augustine realizes he's known to this collection of ecclesial dignitaries as someone who spent almost a decade as a professed enemy of Christianity but who is now able publicly to defend the sincerity of his love for Christ in his church perhaps desirous of showing how all earthly eros and worldly desire have been eradicated in him this relatively new convert zealously pronounces that scripture quite clearly holds that God alone is love so God alone should be loved you see these great Saint Simon style it's--and company right to me that's an instance of stern minded Christianity becoming a saint by sitting on a pole for 40 s maybe you're called to it probably not but 15 years later agustín's interior life as well as the demands of his public office change considerably by the year 407 he's proven himself a successful and faithful bishop he has spent countless hours listening to the pains and the promises of thousands of simple believers he's preached heard confessions spent long days adjudicating civil court cases as Christian bishops did so the next time he turns back to the comment on the same passage the first John 48 he not only inverts the taxonomy the word order here but even attributes this reversal to John himself in his homilies on the First Epistle of John delivered an easter of 407 we hear this how could it be a short while ago love is from God now love is God so first John 48 says god is love first down 47 says love is from God for God is the father and son and holy spirit the Sun is God from God the Holy Spirit is God from God and these three are one God not three gods right if the Sun is God and the Holy Spirit is God and He loves him in whom the Holy Spirit dwells then love is God but it is God because it is from God in this 15-year gap agustín's exegesis of first John has now come to a place where he can state that if God is love then love is God we again see how the mutual indwelling of the Holy Spirit assures us that what we wish to call love will be God's essence s Davis as well as the movement from and back to God ex Deo first John 47 and this is a position which will only grow in the decades for Agustin in a homily dated for 19 for instance we again here how to love and to be loved as a gift of the Holy Spirit and so charity being entirely the gift of God to such an extent sorry to such an extent that it is even called God as the Apostle John says charity is God notice he turns John around and says John's the one that did this and whoever remains in charity remains in God and God and him these icons always make these Saints look so sad you're Francis Xavier and Ignatius and favor in your Chapel here they look like they just came home from the dentist and poor Agustin here notice how Agustin now actually attributes this inversion to the Apostle John himself a convenient slip when he's advancing a rather intriguing innovation what is significant here is how Agustin has matured his pastor and curator of the human condition he passes very long days counseling and listening to others sees how his congregants love their children and boast about their grandchildren the residual guilt of misusing his heart and his intellect has subsided his interaction with the Christian families and farmers of the northern African plains has opened his eyes to the holiness of all loves the mature gustan is no longer afraid of two competing kinds of loves one Christian and one carnal by now he sees that there is only one love God and so whether one starts with the divine or the human has been legitimized this one love progresses from God to God's people with such clarity and circularity that if we love each other we love Christ that's pretty powerful obviously Agustin no longer fears that what is to be properly considered charity could replace God for it is God in fact he tells us congregation love and whatever you love know that such a bond comes from God not one to shy away from dramatics in the pulpit oftentimes rehearsing imaginary conversation between believers drawing from concrete situations from their careers and experiences in town and on the farm agustin the orator uses a rather common experience from the streets of hippo hippo is probably forty percent Christian you know he's got a lot of non-christian pagans walking around and in a sermon on the Feast of the Lord's ascension he's come to terms with the fact that the incarnate and visible son of God is ascended and is now seated at the right hand of the father so he cleverly depicts a non-christian interlocutor who challenges the neophytes recently received creed who in turn respond so you got the simple Christian just baptized probably not knowing too much in this ancient old pagan and the young Christian says you're saying to me show me your God I'm saying to you pay a little attention to your heart show me your God's you say but I say attend a little to your heart but in his heart of course the pagan finds all sorts of sin and filth and less shiz away from the god of the Christian whoever uses this moment of true fear to teach that if God is too much for you remember that God became a man to what was a long way away from you has come down right next to you through humanity the place for you to stay in that's God but the way for you to get there that's man it's one of the same Christ both the way to go and the place to go by in this exchange we can appreciate a bigger piece of theology than just some Missy illogical method and how to witness to non-believers we see how a Gustin understands how most of us have come to love God by first loving humanity in other words he's come to appreciate how the human heart regardless of geographical nationality or diversity of personal experience desires the same thing in the end we all want to love and be loved we all want perfect immortality and joy this is why the famous line at the opening of the confessions is in the singular our heart is unsettled unquiet card nostrum in creative our heart is restless it's not our hearts the same condition we all want the same thing for Agustin to love and be loved the Christian and the non-christian have the same heart this proves to be the locus of evangelization or as he will preach on another occasion when you want to teach others of Christ point them to what gives their hearts pleasure in whom they find delight quoting his first intellectual mentor the Latin poet Virgil Agustin uses what would be a familiar line to his lot in congregation each one is by his or her pleasure drawn so leading his flock into deeper reflection on their commitments obligations and daily joys the Bishop of Hippo continues those who delight in the truth whose delight is in happiness whose delight is in justice whose delight is in eternal life are drawn to Christ because each of those is Christ give me a lover he'll know what I'm he'll know by experience what I'm saying give me a man of desires give me someone who's hungry someone who travels thirsty through the wilderness a pats for the fountain of eternal life he'll know what I'm saying that's where evangelization begins it's not a dog when it's not in throwing a catechism of someone it's asking them what do you love where's your heart and flame what gets you out of bed in the morning in this way a Gustin would have moments of evangelization not begin in lofty dogma but in the hearts desires insisting that the Roman and the Christians seek the same thing for that reason the formerly suspicious Agustin has come to understand how most of us have come to love was it not by gazing upon a smiling face appearing over our cribs was it not the love of a mother which incorporated us into the mysteries and levels of charity and care the love of our friends as we grew the love of a spouse and our own children in whom we found our own hearts expanding so why the love of a creature may be chronologically and often even emotionally prior the love of God must be ontologically informatively prior it is the one in the same love but experienced by creatures appropriate to our maturation and life's unfolding so the point is this for a Gustin even though we may get emotionally more experiential love with a creature even though we may first love a creature and our parents and friends well we step back at the end of our day at the end of our lives we realize that was God happening that was where God was being met in our lives but there is a caveat and a caution we hear often from the bishops pulpit that we must love been a love well or correctly if what we consider to be love truly is love after all whatever you love rightly you love with love so this is important this little bending if you don't take Latin you should identify love with God's essence carries obvious expectations we could easily check such movements with say st. Paul's characteristics of love in first Corinthians 13 love is patient love is kind love is never self seeking out I go to a wedding you'll hear it the truth of the matter for a Gustin is that love is an all-or-nothing event this is important we either love one another with God's very self which therefore necessitates such love will be unwavering Lee virtuous chase and fruitful or we are bound to one another out of our own fallen fabrications that is the glue that holds each of us together I the Holy Spirit are our own interior poverty's fear control lust manipulation either we have only a tenuous and fleeting connection that death will surely destroy or we are together as one forever this is a gustin's point if it's love that binds you you never have to say goodbye you might have to say see you later mom see you later grandma but if you have loved that other with true love you'll be together forever as one with that let us conclude when I was an undergrad that was my favorite word in any lecture let us conclude by examining for important implications of agustín's theology of charity the first is that all of our true loves originate and our oriented toward God such charity may be experienced at first is only human but as we grow we hopefully realize the true sources of our love's is love that said we must never confuse the Creator with the creature for the love of the latter has always grown engaged by one's love of God by keeping God's commandments and so on agustín's most quoted scriptural verse almost 500 times in his writings as romans 55 the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us because this line captures perfectly the simultaneous truth that love is God and comes from God the schema of coherence must necessarily begin with gift to his creatures and God does this by convincing those creatures that they matter to him and are invited into an eternal espousal and one of his lesser-known works de que digas ondas Rudy Busan the teaching beginners the faith he wrote this around the Year 400 basically 4dr es people who are teaching the faith in parishes Agustin makes a beautiful claim telling his catechists they are to teach those preparing for baptism that quote before all else Christ came so that people might learn how much God loves them that's it it's that easy and might learn this so that they would catch fire with love for him who first love them and so they would also love their neighbor as he commands and shows by example love is circular never stops anywhere even in Christ it's going to overflow loves God love is God's first transformative gift to his creatures in Christ the divine nature is made accessible and offers other humans a burning love pure fire enabling us first to receive God's charity and then bring that same love to others as an eternal dance of indwelling with the Greek father is called Perry choruses to dance around the Greeks understood the Trinity is kind of a big dance love never terminates in one other this is why agustin can ask do you want to discern the character of a person's love notice where it leads if it leads to god it is Caritas if it leads back to yourself it's Cupid eat us the second factor flows from this view of charity that loving God and loving what and how God loves love does not ethereal e elevate but plunges a lover into the world of moral ordering love has expectations it has demands first and foremost love demands that one's heart be submitted to God the Father is one of his beloved children surrender might be a better word they're not submitted natural affection is limited to biology and time and in very strong language Agustin echoes the Gospels telling us to hate our mother and father remember those words from Jesus hate your mother and father hate your son and daughter but not obviously in a way that is opposed to love god is love but when we love in only that way we are loving merely extensions of our own needy selves that's why agustin rights and a very religione on True Religion I mean it is more inhuman to love a man for not being a man but for being your son for this means not loving in him what belongs to God the fact that he's human but what belongs to you the fact that he's your son or she's your daughter small wonder then if you don't get to the kingdom of heaven seeing that you love what is personal and private to you and not what is common to all this challenge to love others not simply as my child or my spouse but as gods child gods mystical bride is magnificently captured at the end of cs lewis's haunting short work on the afterlife the great divorce lewis rights of a grieving mother who lost her young son years ago and now wants to go to heaven herself so she can be once again with her little Michael in a ray other in a rather painful passage to read Lewis wants to teach us all that natural affection and biological instinct is what he calls a germ desire for God if you ever held your niece or nephew ever held your own child right doesn't that happen you can't love this little one enough and your heart hopefully overflows into true love and to love himself it cannot stay merely human because love is not in the end human love is divine for love is God's very nature to make this point then Lewis composes this scene Pam the mother tells the angel we'll never mind I'll do whatever is necessary what do you want me to do come on the sooner I begin it the sooner they'll let me see my boy but Pam do think don't you see you're not beginning at all as long as you are in that state of mind you're treating God only as a means to Michael to which Pam retorts you wouldn't talk like that if you're a mother you mean if I were only a mother the angel response but there is no such thing as being only a mother you exist as Michael's mother only because you first exist as God's creature that relation is older and closer no listen Pam he also loved he also has suffered he also has waited a long time if the first lesson in love is that it is a gift of God the second lesson must be this there are no natural loves what we call a natural love will in the end wither and fade not worthy of the name of love after all however natural love eventually consecrated in Christ is the end of the supernatural life of God Himself gluing his faithful into eternal ecclesia consequently we must be free wondering whether we love another too much or if we might perhaps be tempted to think and we love too many people know love is eternal love is infinite and the more we appropriate the more we receive charity the more it advances us into others the third point to consider is how love of neighbor is the visible growth and gauge of one's love for God the acid test of our loving the invisible God is the virtue we show it toward visible persons to make this case agustin pulls off a fancy latin word play by telling us that true love is true love only when it is undefeatable and it is undefeatable invicta only when it is not fichte our mere fictions our own contrived affections he writes here he preaches but only then convert you be undefeated in these trials when charity is genuine and not pretended so the one who gives us real virtue is the one who pours out charity into our hearts in this way he can insist that loving God and neighbor are synonymous next quote these two Commandments are found to be so interrelated but it is not possible for a person either to have love of God without loving his neighbor or to have love of his neighbor without loving God but what is free is not that love of God and love of neighbor connected every Christian knows that but that agustin allows if not insists that love for fellow creatures is not a separate kind of love than one's love for Jesus Christ but an entree into understanding what eternal love truly is there is not a secular and a sanctifying love it's a challenge to love those who irritate and anger us but it is all too convenient to love of God who is distantly seated off in heaven well above our streets are off comfortably in a tabernacle Agustin preaches we all want to meet Christ seated in heaven but we must attend to him lying under the arches attend to him hungry attend to him shivering with cold attend to him needy attend to him a foreigner the fourth and final principle for our time together is then how Agustin refuses to divide loves into holy and mundane there are neither to sources nor to sorts of love there is as Agustin preaches only one charity una Caritas but expressed in two precepts love of God and love of neighbor in his opening encyclical Pope emeritus Benedict in August an Augustinian scholar probably the best augustinian scholar of the 20th century insisted that there can be one love that if an antithesis between human and divine love between eros and agape would ever be taken to extremes the essence of Christianity be detached from the vital relations of fundamental fundamental the vital relations fundamental to human existence and we become a world apart an admirable perhaps but decisively cut off from the compacts fabric of human life yet eros and agape ascending love and descending love can never be completely separated the more the two and their different aspects find a proper unity in the one reality of love one cannot read these words of Benedict and not appreciate his awareness that we are not simply made to love God as one who demands all of our fealty and affection for the quote complex fabric of human life is precisely where a God made flesh would be how often I think of this when I walk into the st. Louis Children's Hospital every week to celebrate Mass I see so many modern-day p 8 oz mothers holding their ailing children and this is a holy seen a holy moment where maternal affection and divine hope can Virg moreover one cannot read these words and think of a homily Agustin gave in hippo centuries before Benedict we must be united to his body so there may be only the one Christ who both descended and ascended the head came down but he went up with his body he went up clothed in the church whom he made ready for himself free from spot or wrinkle did he ascends alone yeah in a way but not without us as long as we are so closely United with him that we are members of his body he is alone yet he is with us for me one person and one forever thank you we have time we have time for questions that i can answer if you have a question I can't answer we don't have time for it what are you guys going well thanks for thanks for coming hey all right any questions comments disagreements sir first of all thank you for deviating are great from the Indians to be wet doesn't agustín while living with this way what does this do with the communion of saints ah very good question and because I have felt that if we become absorbed in the exhibit reason to the point that we need nothing else except that unity with God yeah good question and one way you're right but that unity of God means also question what does this do about the community of saints isn't heaven just beatific alee united with God let me back up the early church there are two images for heaven one is the movie theater image God's down there we're all kind of seated the other images like the big Italian family dinner people just running around eat and drink and having fun that's a gustin's vision I think but doesn't union with God forever absorb or exclude other loves the gustan would say no that what happens in heaven is that we are gazing upon God we've become one with gobbet in such a way that we've also become truly one with each other that when we look at God we can't help but seat reserved the Sioux when we look at God we can help see but you know ignatius it's not the kind of love that is a blind or kind of love that has no room for other people I mean it really wouldn't be love if you told your spouse please marry me and have no other friends alright that's what we call abuse that's not the way love works and so heaven will certainly not be that that makes sense it to some extent but then again be afraid thing you neither marry nor be given in marriage right well I mean the way we understand that line in Matthew that there that people are not given in marriage is the fact that marriages don't happen but see in one way we're never so more married than in heaven because finally all of our sins and selfishness have died away that we all have become spouse we all have become bride all the divisions and all the ugliness stuff down here has died away but that doesn't mean there are marriages going on that means we finally have become well we finally become one marriage has finally reached its whole point of getting us into heaven that's why there isn't technically marriage in heaven but the marital metaphor still uses the bridegroom and bride image because that is finally over it's finally perfected so yeah right well not for a Gustin if you love you have the Holy Spirit in you now right but those aren't those aren't loves we use that you're right we use that word I love pizza but that's not you know that's not the gift of Holy Spirit that's just my own tell me lust manipulation control those things are there mimics the mimic rees of love there mockeries of love but they aren't really love this is a gustin's whole point that if you really do love you have the Holy Spirit I mean so there was this Jesuit in the 19th in the 1900s Karl Rahner who devised this term anonymous Christian that people who live charitable lives virtuous lives are Christians they just don't know it I don't know what you think of that justin martyr in the year 150 he's going to get beheaded here soon he's living in Roman anti-christian pagan life in a society and he writes in his apology in section 46 he says whoever lives in accord with reason is already a Christian that's amazing whoever lives in accord with logos is already a Christian and so I think we Christians you're right first off you had a lot of stuff in your question your point love is not a feeling it's not an emotion it is technically an act of the will and the act of the will usually does something like this I don't feel like loving this person this person gets on my nerves this person's having a really bad hair day but I'm going to say no when I see him or her i'm going to say i love you and i'm going to act charitably toward them why because the Holy Spirit is the one doing this with me through me as me that in the Incarnation God has become like me given me the power to align my will with his even though I my in my fallen state I may not want to love I am giving the ability to love to be Christ for this person and so that's the gift of the Holy Spirit you're right it's not a feeling or an emotion and I would say that if true love is occurring that person is in contact with true God whether they're saved or converted that's a different question yeah you can say that's why the God gives you the cross to test is this really love right yeah what do you mean warned warned of what yeah yeah I guess so yeah how about so worried about psychology I mean psychology because I'm more worried about MTV and snapchat right the things you call love whatever instachat face book thing you know love can be a very superficial term but you're right i mean love is ultimately tested in the cross and so the warnings yeah the warning should come from what we have warnings built into our liturgical your lint it's a time to test your love what you really love about this so yeah yeah are you an undergraduate what are you studying peace justice and human rights all right excellent question your dinner even heard of saying nation Lola okay what is the Jesuit motto what's one of the Jesuit miles were putting on the spire but this is great glorious to have a young person asked questions what is one of the Jesuit mottos yeah career personnel get care for the whole person how about finding God in all things see the reason I was attracted to looking at this in Agustin is because I think too many of us relegate God simply to sunday mornings simply to ceremony too pious ritual those are all right and we have to but if we put god only in church only in communion only in song and praise we miss so much more of God that have you ever thanked God for the beauty of your campus sitting there watching the leaves fall and thanking God the creator of all this what a Gustin wants you to take away from this talk is don't separate your love into something you think is arduous and difficult that's God I have to go to Nicaragua to find God no maybe you should go back to be nice to your roommate for once there's God to write we can all yeah you guys know they're just wicked to each other I heard them arguing in the hall earlier but a Gustin would say no love is one and so don't ever dismiss the love that you have for your niece or nephew your love for your best friend as something carnal and human because you love that person rightly you're actually loving them with God's very self and don't ever think your love for God always has to be religious that your love of God will always lead you into love of creature it's a circle it's not a ladder like this does that make sense so I could have done this talk in three minutes if you were here earlier but yeah all right no no yeah you gotta get the PowerPoint these days yeah one of my favorite quotes Dustin is love God and do what you will and affect your whole point change into God you will love others with God's love right and so we pay attention to our will our desires right every German ones because they are guys exactly and if we loved God doing evil going against God's will wanting to be attractive it won't even be attractive like leaving this talk early wouldn't even be an option if we are truly one with God right that's the beautiful thing and that line is scary because a lot of us we want we know I need more explicit rules I need more but that's not the way love grows can you imagine having a house like that you know my wife gave me the ten things I have to do today to love her it might be helpful right but that's not the way love works yeah yes gustin's mind is he thinking of the word creature anthropocentric like question is it when Agustin talks about loving others than God is it just human persons or is it all of creation right I think Agustin actually does hold that there are non-human animals in heaven there are things other than just the elect the Saints and the angels now what a Gustin say I can properly love my pet he never he never seeks to answer you never asked that question but I think you there are points in the Gus's thought where he'd say yeah you do and you love that pet not in and of phytos own self I lay my life down for you if i don't know but i love Fido because this is God's well this is one of God's gifts to me so I do think we're called to love creation that way that make sense not as an end in itself I'm not going to serve creation that way I serve God alone but in serving God alone I respect and honor what God has given me hi again Agustin never says so but I think so I think looking at the end of the city of god he has it he has an amazing line in book 22 the city of god he says God longs to redeem core corpora at corpora Leah bodies and bodily things and agustín's God is a God who never ends but he simply men's I don't see anywhere in agustín's theology that justifies the termination of any creature but God will I think redeem all of creation into new heaven and new earth yeah please yeah sure and if anybody wants to jump in so in the scriptures Jesus says unless you hate your mother and father you're not worthy to follow me right I've come to set mother against daughter mother in law against daughter like that's a real hard one that happens all the time well what does that mean how can a God of love commands you to hate well obviously what he's asking you to do is to hate in a way that doesn't contradict love so here's what agustin says that you love so someday pray God you'll have children you love them first not as these are my creatures look what I've done you love them first because they are gods son or daughter before they're even yours and what's going to make you a great mother is realizing the fact that your first a daughter that relationship is more ancient it's more salvific because then you won't control your kids you won't micromanage and helicopter parent because you realize that there's somebody who loves them more than even you and that what's going to be eternity for you is it the fact that your son or daughter the fact that they have become Saints with you they've become also children your brothers and sisters does that make sense the great divorce is a tough read that scene is very hard to read for me please all right yeah yeah disorder Tash moves when we have the wrong order of loves right I mean even though there's a circularity one of my points was that God must be the gauge by which I if I say if I say to another creature in a romantic outburst oh honey you can do no wrong in my eyes I will follow you anywhere and she says good let's go sell heroin to the grade school kids down the street I'm like okay that's not love it may sound romantically sweet but only when I look at another and say I love you in God I see God and you you are becoming an instance ease read Dante he gets to heaven by following not Jesus by following Beatrice the love of his life but because he loves her rightly chase Lee virtuously his love for her takes him into heaven and that's the way that love had so disordered affection is when I say I'm going to have this I love pizza so much i'm going to have it even though you don't get any something like that a disordered affection means we love wrongly yeah snow yeah teach all about this world of social media oh yeah from my rotary phone yeah um but where does that tie into like what you're saying like undergraduates like us how would I guess the Boston was never here or but that he never really experienced what right when your old senior our eyes kind of yeah it's a good question what would it Gus to say to your world i mean in one way a Gustin knows your world pretty well but my fear for an undergrad at 20 do you guys know what the vice of sloth is sloth who in here is busy and stretched and doesn't have time for enough right the vice of sloth for agustin and Aquinas and the great Christian thinkers is being so busy you don't have time for what's really important we tend to think of slow as physical laziness but that's only John Calvin one of the Reformers because of the Protestant work ethic he said sloth was being physically lazy Aquinas defined sloth is the tendency to wander and flit about and not give yourself over to anything that's truly serious or ponderous who in here when you look at your computer you have like 86 tabs open at the top or when you go to write a paper you gotta check facebook you got you know you and I can be so stretched and always in demand that we really have a hard time focusing on what's important and that's why if I can say the undergrads could you please set your phone for three to five minutes every day to be intentionally silent just to sit there even if I don't even know if you're a theist but just to say I'm going to shut off the world for three minutes a day I'm just going to sit here and if you pray say holy spirit this is your time this is when you and I could just be together no other distractions if three minutes may sound like a little time but if you do it every day it's quite a commitment it actually can really make an impact and it will change your life I guarantee you if it doesn't dr. Murphy will mow your lawn every summer all right it's like any other students all right yeah that's a great way to spend that time if you yeah in a very tangible physical way sure and you guys have a beautiful little reservation chapel in your main chapel there it's a good time just to go spend a few minutes and if you're Catholic I mean that's what we believe that God save the world by becoming flesh well where's that flesh today if it weren't for the Eucharist christiana be a very mean trick right we could only remember Jesus like Abraham Lincoln or only look forward to meeting him one day in heaven but he says I will never leave you orphans I'll be with you to the end of the world well how did he keep his promise by becoming flesh ah the Eucharist but notice that you kurus doesn't have hands and feet in ears in a mouth but you do that's your job to take that real presence and become it for the world if you want to read something really cool read Agustin sermon 272 you can google it if you don't how to Google I'll show you but sermon 272 about becoming Eucharist for the world he says when you make bread what do you do you crush the wheat you pour the water in and you bake it he says at baptism you and I were exercised we were ground out of our individuality we were made members of the church we were then leavened with the water and then we were baked with the chrism of the Holy Spirit the oil he says you've become Eucharist for the world it's really beautiful it's really forward-thinking all right that's one hour probably dr. Murphy any closing no but I want to say i don't think i've ever been in one of these events where the questions of undergraduates were so prominent and that would thank you for listening these questions from well it's more than thanks

Channel: JCU Information Technology Services

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Keywords: Rev. David Meconi, jcu

Id: LlFA8AcVh78

Length: 66min 3sec (3963 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2016