Love is....

Not Mere Ethics.

The book of First Corinthians tries to describe the indescribable. What is Love. Love can be seen by its fruits. Love is patient and kind, not boastful, not quick to take offense, not arrogant or rude. It bears all things, believes all things and hopes all things. I add, It operates under the Ignatian
principle of assuming the best intentions of any ambigious statement and giving the person the benefit of an assumption of goodwill. We are all trying to figure it out together.

Yes, it says, if you love me you will do my commandments. Obedience follows from Love, but it is not Love, it is a fruit of love. Following the law and doing obedience can also be done compulsorily with the meanest of hearts not in love just because it pays to be good out of a sense of self interest.

Love is much deeper, much grander, much higher, much holier, because God is Love. Love does not condemn anyone because Jesus didn't come to condemn but to save.
I loved the Bertolini movie I saw at the Italian Embassy this week, Pinocchio in which the good 'Fairy' who is a sort of Blessed Mother analogous figure keeps getting the foppish Pinocchio out of trouble by saving him time and again as he struggles on his journey to become a good real boy rather than a wooden puppet. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whosoever believed on him should not perish but have everlasting life-God saves and this is Love. God wishes no one should perish.

And yet, the church in parts, usually doctrinaire ideological hardliners want to subsume and reduce Love to a set of canon law moral maxims that must be adhered to or else- perish even, we don't care. Bye Bye. This is not an accurate reflection of who God is. It is not representative of why Jesus came. It is a pathetically puny understanding of the heart of
God, which is found in real people not the stone statues that centrally form a diminished idolization of commandments over their creator. Love is a creative Fire.