42. Is christian love different?

Is it possible to distinguish between two types of human love, one Christian and the other not? There is of course only one love, which each one - believer or not - discovers with wonder, touching the sacred in a certain sense. It is a mysterious relationship which appears to exist on its own, summoning as it were from above the man and the woman whom it unites; an intriguing adventure which promises life yet is dangerous as death, for it demands everything; a promise kept but so strong that it seems to have no end in view, as though by its intensity it bore the seeds of eternity. There is only one love, experienced by Christians as by all others. Christians must know that their experience is no more wonderful than is that of others, even though they know its secrets: they can tell from where it comes and whither it goes.

"My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God, and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God... God's love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him. This is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God's love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. My dear people, since God has loved us so much, we too should love one another... God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God and God lives in him."

Human love finds its truth in a larger circle which enfolds it, moves it forward and at the same time provides for it a structure. In the history of humanity, a unique adventure traverses the centuries: the Bible is nothing else but a tremendous love story between a people and their God. Like a huge fresco, it illustrates a gesture of love unparalleled in the world. Through a series of errors, searches and encounters; of exile and wanderings through the desert, the desire for union through listening to the word, results - through crises and healings, separations and reconciliations - in victory over everything, even over death, the ultimate barrier. The stakes of this luminous drama retain all their intensity - though on a smaller scale - in the drama of the human couple.

The wedding at Cana marks a major turning point in this covenant, for it is in fact, jars put aside for ritual purification which - filled to the brim - become through Jesus' intervention, the bottomless reserves of a delicious wine, at once surprising and providential. Six jars, an incomplete number, for to make up the number seven, one is missing. This is not just an interesting anecdote, but a well-constructed theological text. If "the hour has not yet come", it is because the New Covenant which is to follow on the bethrothal, is tragically to be sealed in the blood of Jesus.

Love is not an easy matter. When after years of instruction, the Word of God comes to live the human adventure, place himself close to his people, putting himself completely at their disposal, he is misunderstood. Not only is he not welcomed, but he is judged to be subversive, sacrilegious and a blasphemer. He is tortured and finally executed.

Why? Because we do not know how to love. We prefer to dominate and to own things. We are incapable of giving, much less of giving everything, of entrusting ourselves to another. Is it possible to love without trust? In a situation of mistrust, at best is established co-existence, which can only exist in opposition to an external third party considered to be dangerous. If there is a bond of some kind, it is of a negative sort, for it is but a union established "against".

Jesus of Nazareth was put to death. Why? Because he contested everything which forms the basis of our societies, that which permits us to avoid others, not to take the risk of meeting the other, and of being open to him. He contested the Law, those traditions and powers which, in order to maintain order and justice, authorised one to exclude and to condemn. To all these general principles, Jesus juxtaposes love of the neighbour. He proposes absolute honesty in face of the other, without shield or protection, with a seventy seven times forgiveness, even if the result is to be persecution. "You have heard it said: `You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.' Well, that was the immature philosophy of the Old Covenant! I say to you: "Love your enemies, pray for your persecutors". Such is the madness and the folly of the living God; they will say of his disciples: "They are full of red wine!" At the wedding we are invited to drink of that vintage!

When speaking of Jesus Christ, I am not talking as might an archaeologist, but about the present: the innocent one is condemned, the prophet is assassinated, the hopes of the poor are betrayed, and jeered at, truth is muffled, love is set aside: the trial of Jesus Christ is repeated every day.

That was two thousand years ago of course, but it was a once for all time, for it was once and for all time that the living God wedded himself to humanity, that he gave to it his Word, that he sacrificed his very self to the limits of his being, joining his cause to that of the excluded ones, and ridiculing for ever the riches and the tranquillity of the powerful.

It is perfectly in order to ask questions about Christ's divinity! He who was assassinated, eliminated, because all through his life he preached against false gods: the Cesar turned into a deity by totalitarian power; society's empty taboos, the demagogic idol of the miracle candidate... The One who fought until his death to free us from straying along false paths, must not be clothed in the tinsel of those pseudo gods which he has overthrown.! We must choose between Him and them!

If Jesus is really dead, then they are the stronger. That is why the Good News which the Church announces to the world, is not the divinity of Christ, but the Risen Christ! "There is no greater love than to give one's life for one's friends": love such as that is always discreet. It can neither be bought nor impose itself, but it triumphs over death, and completely escapes the laws of power and of market forces!