All you need is love

One of Saint Augustine’s most beautiful and well-known dictums was: Love, and do what you will. Naturally, the author of The City of God and of the spiritual autobiography The Confessions was speaking about love for our neighbour which, if practised keeping in mind the other person and forgetting oneself, becomes so spontaneous that it is no longer necessary to remember all God’s commandments at every moment. In other words: those who are committed to loving God with all their heart, soul and strength, and to loving others as themselves, in truth almost unconsciously obey all the commands of divine law - they love.

Contrary to what some might think, love is never generic. Love is always concrete and precise, right down to its most minute details. It is always aware of the sufferings, feelings, needs and desires... of others. It is above all aware of the needs which a relationship with God involves: prayer (our conversation with God), the Eucharist (our meeting with Him), confession (our reconciliation with Him)... This must not be limited to the bare minimum, it has to be allowed to achieve its full potential. In the words of the Curé of Ars: I love you, my God, and my only desire is to love you until the last breath of my life. I love you, my infinitely loveable God, and I would rather die loving you than live without loving you. I love you, Lord, and the only grace I ask is to live loving you eternally. My God, if my tongue cannot say in every moment that I love you, I want my heart to repeat it to you as often as I draw breath.

Love has its own needs, and it has to be expressed in the most appropriate way. If love were purely abstract, it could cover a multitude of sins. For love, one could even be decadent, violent, arrogant... and yet this is not so. The apostle Paul has given an incomparable depiction of love: Love is patient and kind, love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Cor 13:4-7).

Love is therefore identified with Charity, the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbour as ourselves for the love of God, and this is why it is the greatest social commandment. Charity, says the New Catechism of the Catholic Church, requires the practise of justice, and it alone makes us capable of it. Charity inspires a life of self-giving: ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it’ (Lk 17:33).

And let us not forget that ultimately, love is not only the new commandment which Christ has given us - love is the very name of God Himself.