Re-reading Michael Himes’ “Doing the Truth in Love: Conversations About God, Relationships and Service” (New York: Paulist Press, 1995, 152 pp.) has been a very thought-provoking experience, perhaps even more provocative than my first reading of the book. I think Michael received the award for best teacher at the University of Notre Dame in two successive years. 

I think the award was not just for best professor in the theology department but for best professor in the university. I was delighted when I heard that, but I was not surprised. That Michael was an extraordinarily gifted teacher is obvious from his book. As I am reading the book I can almost hear Michael speaking. There is one paragraph in the book that I have been thinking about during the past two days. The following is the paragraph: 

“We cannot experience God unless we love our brothers and sisters and we cannot love our brothers and sisters without experiencing God. … 

“You cannot not believe in God if you truly love your brothers and sisters because you will experience your ability to love as a gift to you not of accomplishment by you. You will find yourself ‘doing’ God, for God will be acting through you. 

“Remember God is more like a verb than a noun, not a lover but love. It is rather like someone asking, ‘Prove to me that there is such a phenomenon as breathing.’ It is not a matter of argument. The person is doing it. In a sense, the Christian demonstration of God is ‘I love you, therefore God exists.’ Agapic love is experienced as a gift not only by the one loved but also by the lover. 

“For the carefully attentive and self-reflective lover knows that his love is so conditioned and so fragile that when it approaches true selflessness the lover’s abilities are transcended. That transcending power which we encounter in loving another for the sake of the other is God” (p.55). 

Put briefly, what Father Himes was suggesting is that to be able to love unselfishly is itself a gift. Using the Greek word “agape” to describe God, Michael suggests that the word is the best term to describe God because the word can be translated as “pure self-gift.” God is pure self-gift. When human persons are able to love unselfishly, they are transcending their own limited ability to love unselfishly and are participating in God as love, in God as pure self-gift. 

I don’t know whether what Father Himes has written could be used as a definitive proof for God’s existence, but I do consider it as a very good argument for God’s existence. It is very different from most attempted proofs for God’s existence that I have encountered. It makes a great deal of sense to me. Loving unselfishly is to me a powerful sign of God’s presence. 

I find Michael’s reflection very similar to one of the insights of the Catholic existentialist, personalist philosopher Gabriel Marcel. The French philosopher claimed that when you love someone, you discover that the beloved will live forever. 

Marcel claimed that your loving revealed that the beloved shared in a power stronger than death. The person’s love liberated the lover to know in a new way. By loving unselfishly and deeply the lover becomes aware of a power stronger than death. 

Loving reveals that the beloved shares in God’s being and through that participation transcends the power of death. What Marcel believed is that love conquers death because of the beloved’s participation in the power of God’s being. The lover becomes aware through unselfish loving of the presence of God’s power. 

In his excellent book “Man: Believer and Unbeliever” (New York: Alba House, 1974, 415 pp.) Francis M. Tyrell wrote the following about Marcel’s philosophical vision: 

“Thus to the lover is attributed an absolute value and the beloved is thought of as participating in God and thus situated in an order that transcends all judgment. Accordingly love addresses itself to the eternal and in effect says to the beloved: ‘Thou at least shall not die.’ 

“The more one loves, the more one sees the beloved as authentic being, that is, as participating in a presence that cannot fail. Thus, although the thou who is the object of love and the I who is its subject may partake of all the deficiencies of finite beings, the love that is the intense form of their communion invariably points beyond to the one who envelopes them with a presence that is unconditional and indefectible” (p.119). 

I believe that both Michael Himes and Gabriel Marcel saw deeply into the mystery and power of love. Their reflections on love seem to me to be not only provocative and stimulating but beautiful and profoundly true. It really is profoundly true that love conquers death.