Leader, Volume 13 #6

Can We Apply the Lessons of Love?

To sidestep the annual pre-Christmas commercialism for forty-eight hours and focus on the spiritual side of Christmas, I have found value in making an Advent retreat. Last year the facilitator had us consider a simple question: for what purpose did Jesus come? I was surprised to learn of a great medieval debate on this theological issue. Thomas Aquinas's answer, "To save us from our sins," was the one adopted by Rome.

After my retreat I noticed how often the daily prayer of the church emphasizes this "saving" aspect: bring us salvation; free us from our sins; Saviour of all, save us. In Ordinary Time we also ask God to cast out from our hearts the darkness of sin; to let us pass the night free from Satan's power. In Lent we concentrate on repentance from our sins; in the Paschal season we remind God that Christ is our Saviour.

Suddenly, everywhere I looked in the church's official writings such as Mass prayers and introductions to its documents, I saw the spinoff from its centuries-old choice. Could there be any other way of looking at Christ's purpose except through this lens?

There was another medieval answer, proposed by Duns Scotus but not officially adopted. Duns Scotus declared that Jesus came to teach us love: how God loves us and how we are to love. This point of view fits in with Jesus' admonition to love one another as I have loved you (Jn 15:12) and his biggest challenge, love your enemies (Mt 5:44). The theme of love also appears in church writings, but as a more diffuse concept than salvation.

The answers of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus are, of course, both true and not mutually exclusive. They are just different starting points. Jesus' entire life teaches us about love and it also saves us from the consequences of our sins. His saving death was the supreme act of love that should teach us something of the meaning of that much-abused word. Theoretically, both answers should influence our individual lives and our whole culture.

But are both really operative? History and literature suggest that we are fascinated with sin, guilt, condemnation and punishment more than with feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger or other acts of Christian love. We emphasize teaching rules to secure merit and justification rather than training in mercy and justice. We seek perfection--so we won't need salvation--rather than compassion.

We can get caught up with one side of the matter, even obsessed with it. And we have not exactly been obsessed with the love that governs how we treat others, self and God. As we approach the end of the second millennium CE, we find Star Wars more awesome than the Star of Bethlehem. What ever happened to "peace on earth, good will towards all"?

Would our history of rivalries and wars that continue to proliferate (and that Compass annually documents) be different if a few hundred years ago the church had chosen to push Duns Scotus's formulation regarding the purpose of Jesus' incarnation? Maybe not. But if the Christian world had put six to seven centuries of its collective effort into analysing and applying the lessons of love, is it not possible that the 1990s would have more to celebrate?

If we could learn to love as Jesus did, that energy would transform our behaviour and the world. The feast of Christmas reminds us that the spark still glows. In the hope that we may yet discover it, we humbly welcome the Christ.