On Friday in the Catholic Church we celebrated the feast of The Sacred Heart of Jesus. At Mass Fr Ger asked the children what the heart was a symbol of. The boys answered that the heart was a symbol of love. And rightly so, you feel love with the heart. I did not get too reflective on the Feast day but later I was struck by it. And it made me think of God.
Recently somebody asked me what my understanding of God was. I responded that God is love. He wanted me to speak more about that answer, I struggled. I know what God is for me but I struggle to put words on it. Truly knowing God and having that relationship with Him can be hard to put into words. Love is an emotion. Does this mean that God is an emotion? No. God loves us unconditionally. The greatest love in the world is the love God has for us. For this reason God is love. It is thanks to God (love) that we can love others. God shows us love first. It can be difficult to describe God using words. I understand God to be great. Love is strong. Great is strong. Therefore God is love. According to Aristotle God can know and love nothing more or less than himself. Because God loves himself greatly and us equally God is love. Scripture does not tell us who or what God is. It is by reading of God's interactions with the people that we learn who/ what God is. In his ministry Jesus was always showing love (God) to those he met. Think of the healing of the paralytic or the woman caught in adultery. Jesus healed the paralytic with love. He showed love to the woman by not passing judgement on her. The greatest love a person can have is to lay down their life for another. And Jesus gave the ultimate sacrifice of love for us by accepting death, death on a Cross. Jesus knew he did not deserve to die but he accepted it for the love of people. And this love was God. To know love is to know God. If we do not know love we cannot know God. If we do not know God we cannot truly love.
God as love is different to our earthly understanding of love. God is not of this world in the normal sense that he is a physical being. God as love is independent of the world. For this reason no worldly words can adequately describe God as love. God is bigger than the world. He is utterly transcendent. God is the master builder, the creator. I could spend hours trying to describe God but to truly understand God we need to have a personal relationship with Him. I firmly believe God is love. My understanding of God as love may be different to your understanding. Neither understanding is wrong for understanding of God is based on our personal relationship with God.
When we celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus we are celebrating God as love as the heart is a symbol of love. But why is it the Sacred Heart of Jesus, not the Sacred Heart of God? Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, he is God. I imagine the feast day is The Sacred Heart of Jesus as Jesus was God who was born to this world. He lived on the earth as human, he had a heart.
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