The Glory Of The LORD Shines Upon You

As we celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany I wanted to share some thoughts on the virtue of charity and how it relates to the gospel today.

The virtue of charity, being a theological virtue, is an infused gift from God. So unlike the cardinal virtues, which are human virtues that start with us and lead us to God, the theological virtues start with God and lead us to God. The difference here is important to recognize if we desire to grow in the virtue of charity.

The first letter of John is a letter on the theology of love. It’s not long and I encourage you to read it straight through if you haven’t already. There are two verses that are key to our understanding of God’s love. The first is from chapter 4, verse 8 and it says, “God is love.” If this is true then our understanding of love must be guided by this basic foundation. Often times we think of love as something that we muster up within ourselves. In this we are led to believe that we love others because we are good and loving people, not because God loves others through us or God loves us and so we love others. To view love in this limited way as coming from our own action, is to not fully understand that God is love. To love is to participate in the love of God that is so graciously shared with us.

The second verse that is key to understanding God’s love is in chapter 4, verse 10, which says “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us.” This takes the foundation of “God is love” and builds upon it by saying that God loves us fist and we love because he loves us. Again, so often we believe that if we love, then God will love us more. This leads us to become more charitable by serving others more and more, but with a false pretense that we are earning not only God’s love, but also the love of our neighbor. While serving others is certainly good to do and it is what we are all called to, so often we can leave out this foundational understanding of love and charity if we aren’t careful.

“I am nothing; I am but an instrument, a tiny pencil in the hands of the Lord with which He writes what he likes. However imperfect we are, he writes beautifully.”

St Teresa of Calcutta

This proper order of the origins of love teaches us that we are merely instruments in the hands of God. He loves in and through us when we are open to receiving His love. Our participation in His love is one of the ways that the divine and the human find communion. When we let God’s love into our hearts, not rejecting it by falling into temptations such as lukewarmness, indifference, irreverence, and hardness of heart, we are able to love divinely. We need God’s love in order to love like He does. When Jesus asks us to love our enemies, He asks this of us because He knows it will require us to discover and receive God’s divine love in order to do so. He also knows it will lead to our communion with God.

The gospel today on this Solemnity of the Epiphany gives us a great framework for how we are to respond to God’s love. We can model after the magi and their response to God’s incredible love when they came upon the place where Jesus was born. “[They] saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts…” (from Matthew 2:11). The magi believed this baby to be the newborn King of the Jews (see Matthew 2:2). They themselves not being Jewish were basically searching for someone else’s King. It is important to note this because the magi’s response was one of worship and reverence, as for a King they considered their own. It was upon seeing the child that they received God’s love and humbly responded to it.

The first thing the magi did was to see the child. They came into the presence of Jesus and something changed. The magi did not act as if they were in the presence of a king, but as if they were in the presence of their king. We too are called to come to the Lord. He is present to us in the tabernacle in every Catholic church in the world. He is also present to us in the monstrance at adoration. It is there in the real presence of Jesus, in our seeing Him with both our eyes and our heart, that we can receive the love of God in a real way. The virtue of charity is expanded in us as we sit with Jesus in His real presence.

The very next thing the magi did was to prostrate themselves and give homage to the baby Jesus. Reverence to God is always due to Him. By the mere fact that He created us and loves us each and every second of our lives, we owe Him honor, respect, and reverence. We honor God not because He is a master who demands it of us, rather the reception of His merciful love evokes a natural response of reverence from us. Upon coming into the presence of God, the magi lowered themselves to the ground, even to the point of putting their face to the ground. In this the magi reveal to God, and to us, what their hearts believed in that moment, that Jesus is God and their King. We must always keep this perspective of who God is and who we are in relation to God; our littleness in comparison to God. Far more often we are concerned with who we are in comparison to our neighbor, when the only comparison that really matters is our relation to God.

The magi, after bowing down in reverence to God for His great love, open up their treasures. God’s love calls us to search our own hearts and see what we can give in return. When we know we are loved by God, our hearts burn with the desire to share that love. It is incredible to watch this happen over and over again in the lives of Christians. It’s almost as if God’s love cannot be contained by our mere human hearts, so we open up our hearts, just as the magi opened up their treasures.

The final thing the magi do is offer their gifts. With open hearts, overflowing with the love of God, we too so readily give without counting the cost. This is how we know it is the love of God, that we give without seeking anything in return. The magi gave their treasures to Jesus, Mary and Joseph and then they left to travel back to their country. They didn’t follow the family to make sure the gifts were used wisely or to their liking. They simply gave the gifts as an offering in gratitude for the great love they had received.

So it is that the virtue of charity is our response to God’s love for us. He loves us first and then we are called to respond in love. We can pray for this virtue to be awakened or to grow in us. The more room we make in our heart to receive God’s love, the more our hearts will overflow with this virtue of charity.

“Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you. See, darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples; but upon you the LORD shines, and over you appears his glory.”

Isaiah 60:1-2