While I was re-reading Cardinal Walter Kasper’s book “Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life” (Translated by Walter Madges. New York: Paulist Press, 2013, pp. 288), I was also working through the philosophy of personalism with students at St. John’s University.
In the course, titled “Personalism,” I offer my opinion that there were no personalists before the 20th century. Of course, there were many great thinkers, such as Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine and St. Thomas, but none of them were personalists the way that 20th-century thinkers, such as Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Emmanuel Mounier, were. The students and I spent an entire semester exploring the mystery of love and the mystery of life commitments.
In my efforts to motivate students to think about the mystery of love, I came upon a paragraph in Cardinal Kasper’s book which succinctly and with some clarity expressed what I was struggling to articulate in class. I marveled both at the cardinal’s insights, and his ability to express them. He wrote the following:
“For the essence of human love entails not only giving something to the other, but communicating oneself in that gift and making oneself the gift. By bestowing ourselves in love, we simultaneously divest ourselves, we give ourselves away. By giving ourselves away in and through this gift, we nevertheless remain ourselves; in fact, we find our own fulfillment in love. For love entails becoming so one with the other that, as a result, neither the beloved nor the lover is absorbed into the other. Rather, love’s secret is that, in becoming one, we first find ourselves and come to our own individual fulfillment. True love is not obtrusive; it respects the other’s being other; it safeguards the dignity of the other. In becoming one with the other, love creates and grants space to the beloved, in which he or she can become themselves. The paradox of love is that it is a unity that includes otherness and difference.”
Discovering Our Identity
As God loves us and we freely accept that love, we do not lose our identity. In fact, the opposite seems closer to the truth. In accepting God’s love, we discover our identity. God’s love of us does not take away our freedom.
In Catholicism, there is no determinism. Whatever happens that is worthwhile involves freedom. When we accept God’s love and allow it to influence us, we become more free. If the love given to me by another human being frees me and helps me to be my best self, then God’s love must free me dramatically. When we surrender to God’s love, we do not become subsumed into God or cease to be who we are. Rather, we become our best selves, a better image of God.
I think of God’s mercy as God’s love in action. Before reading Cardinal Kasper’s book, whenever I thought of God’s mercy, I tended to think of someone who had rejected God’s love throughout his or her life and then, at the last moment, accepted God’s mercy. Now I see more clearly that every one of us needs God’s mercy and that mercy is constantly offered to us. That God has become intimately involved in every person’s life reveals God’s mercy.
In reflecting on God’s mercy toward us, the importance of us being merciful with one another almost spontaneously comes to mind. One of the saddest experiences is meeting former good friends who no longer speak to one another. Even more sad is a situation in which family members no longer speak to one another. Whenever I hear of such a situation, it often seems to have started with some misunderstanding. On the surface, it seems to be solvable and that the former relationships can be restored. Of course, this does not happen easily. This may be because those closest to us can hurt us the most.
I have long thought that the person who holds a grudge and refuses to forgive does serious harm to himself or herself. Having read Cardinal Kasper’s book, I think that refusing to forgive goes against our nature. We are called to be gift-givers and lovers and to imitate God’s love and mercy. When we refuse to forgive, we not only sin against God and those we refuse to forgive, but also ourselves.
Father Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).