[7/9] Novena of Grace: "Love"
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Meditation: Imagine Jesus hearing Éponine’s song, but singing back to her.
Not in indifference, but in intimate response:
he ultimate "object" of love (Eros) is God (or the divine), who is considered pure actuality—a being that lacks nothing, perfect, immutable, impassible (unaffected by anything, not swayed by need, passion, or suffering). This God attracts all things by his perfection, drawing them to himself as the object of love (Eros). Eros here is covetous in a philosophical sense—not selfish or greedy, but a striving toward the Beautiful, the True, the Good.
But that is only a single part of the whole essence of love. It is incomplete. It stops at eros-as-desire-for-God and cannot conceive of God desiring us. In the Christian understanding, guided by faith, this God loves man. To love means to be moved, to be affected. And not only does God love man, but God is a personal subject—and even "jealous"—a God who chooses and elects.
What does God love in man? The highest form of beauty: the beauty of persons. That is why every person is a mystery of unfathomable beauty. God loves (Eros) by protecting and caring for the beautiful in each person—not to possess, but to set free like Himself, to love (Agape, sacrificial love).
“No longer is it self-seeking, a sinking in the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it becomes renunciation and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice” (DC 6).
Idem velle atque idem nolle—to want the same thing, and to reject the same thing—was recognized by antiquity as the authentic content of love: the one becomes similar to the other, and this leads to a community of will and thought.
The love story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God’s will increasingly coincide: God’s will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself. Then self-abandonment to God increases, and God becomes our joy” (cf. Ps 73[72]:23–28). Deus Caritas Est 17
If love had not been revealed as Agape in the Christian sense, and had remained only as Eros, what would love be like?
Perhaps it would be as the ancient philosophers envisioned: a god so perfect that he does not love—because to love would mean to become vulnerable, to change, to be involved.
I invite you to listen to the song On My Own from the musical Les Misérables because in it we find a mirror of such "impoverished love." The character Éponine sings of a deep, aching love for someone who does not return her affection. Her love is real, sincere, and self-giving—but it is not mutual. She loves someone who is unaware of her love, someone who, in fact, loves another.
“And I know it’s only in my mind. That I’m talking to myself and not to him.”
This resonates with the idea of loving a silent, unmoved object—not a relationship, but a one-way longing.
Éponine’s tragic song is a cry of unrequited love. It helps us feel the pain of longing without response. Benedict XVI enters that same emotional space—the sorrow of loving an unloving object—to expose the inadequacy of the Greek philosophical view of God.
But Christian revelation breaks the silence.
The God of Jesus Christ does not merely receive love—He initiates it.
He is not absent in our loneliness—He enters into it.
He is not blind to our longing—He meets us there, even when we think we’re “on our own.”
On this 7th day of our novena, we pray, “Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.” Fr George Ganss SJ explains that "what [St Ignatius] really meant seems to be better expressed by De Freux’s Latin translation, the Vulgate, which Ignatius used for seven years: amorem tui solum cum gratia tua, “Give me only love of yourself along with your grace.” He does not beg for just any love. He begs for a love that is not impoverished. In short, it is everything that God wants and desires! Fr JM Manzano SJ
Grace to Beg For: "Lord, grant me the grace to know that I am loved not by a silent, unmoved god, but by You—a God who lacks nothing and yet chooses to love me, to walk with me, and to be moved by my joy and sorrow."
Not in indifference, but in intimate response:
“You are not alone...
You are not unloved...
I walked the night for you too...
I am not blind. I see you...
I have always been beside you...”
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