“Our Savior asserts that the whole Law and the prophets depend on these two commandments: love of God and of our neighbor. These two are signified in the one Spouse of the Church, Jesus Christ, who is at the same time our neighbor and God, brother and lord, king and friend, the Alpha and Omega.” – St. Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, 4:5
We easily fall into thinking that something can only be one thing. We can particularly fall into viewing God in only one way. God is a judge. God is distant. God is accepting. We pick one of those as our default image of God. So too with Jesus. Some see Jesus primarily as a friend, others as a king. Part of what Bonaventure is reminding us in the passage above is that in God things that seem like opposites can both be true. Jesus can be both our neighbor and our Lord, our brother and a king. More than that, though, Bonaventure is explaining that commandment and grace co-exist together. Jesus tells us that God’s law is to love. We are commanded to love God and love neighbor. Yet love does not appear on command; it comes out of connection and compassion and relationship. In short it comes from grace. Thus it is through grace that we are able to love and follow God’s command. For Bonaventure, then, the virtue of charity is the mark of grace. Our ability to compassionately give of ourselves comes only because God’s love flows through us, yet in that act of charity we are able to fulfill the command that God gives us. Command and grace work together in us to open our souls to God’s presence.
Do you fall into the either/or thinking of command and grace? How does the virtue of charity show up in your spiritual life? Theologically the virtue of charity is our ability to love God and others. It is having passion to know God and desire to spent time with God, and this passion leads to caring for the needs of others. How do you recognize that feeling in your life, and what practices do you have to make that feeling concrete? Cultivating this virtue is central to spiritual practice. At the same time, we must remember that this sort of love always starts with God. God loves us first, and our experience of that love is what makes us desire to know God and care for others. Grace leads to practice, which leads us back to knowing our need for grace that again moves us to act. It is never just one thing, but a continual holding together of different things within God.