The question has been posed: could Christ have saved the world with a drop of His blood? On one hand, yes, why not? He is God and He could do whatever He wants to do. Now, we know He didn’t, but why? As it was once observed by Peter Kreeft, if there are five and a half to six quarts of blood in the human body than Christ could give no less than five and a half to six quarts of human blood. In other words, Christian love teaches that enough is never enough until...it gives everything. I know that reads as quite daunting, but that is the Christian standard--the norm by which our love is to be measured against.
This kind of unconditional love also means that no matter how great our greatest achievements are, or how bad our worst moments are, God will never abandon us. God meets us where we are at and walks with us as He is.
God calls us to constant repentance and to share in the very love that we have received, the love that is not conditioned to anything.
Sharing in God’s unconditional love is the paradox of all paradoxes. If you want more of God’s love, then you must give God away, because God is Love--that’s the paradox. We never possess God’s love, because the moment we receive God’s unrestricted love is the moment we are inspired to share God’s love with others. Conventional wisdom states (wisdom of the world): to give something away is to lose something. Unconventional wisdom states (God’s wisdom): to give something away is to gain something. At best, Love possesses us.
Love, as taught by Saint Thomas Aquinas, is to will the good of the other, because to will the good of the other is to love as God loves. Among other things, this includes not allowing another person’s weaknesses to dictate how we love. This is what Christ teaches us on the cross. Christ teaches us that love is to enter into the misery of another and fill their darkness with the light of Christ, the light of love!
So as we read, teach, and pray about how to better live our this summit of all virtue, love, let us be mindful that imitation of God’s love is never rationed out or portioned, but lavished and poured out as a sharing in God’s own life!
