Only one thing is necessary, said Jesus Christ (Lk 10:42); and only one thing should concern us, should Christians add: our love for Jesus Christ.

            God became man because He wanted to be loved by man in both a divine and a human way. In a divine way because that is God’s proper form of loving: the perfect form of perfect love, and the form which makes man’s love perfect; in a human way because that is man’s proper form of loving.

            Once God became man, man is able to love Him in his proper human way and, at the same time, with a perfect, total, beside-himself love –in a divine way. At long last, man can truly fall in love with God, in the sense that man can make Him the sensible object of his love, once God has made Himself in the likeness of men: See my hands and feet, that it is I myself. Handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have, said Our Lord to His disciples after His resurrection; and the gospel adds: And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and feet (Lk 24:39—40).

            In man, Divine-human love is born, grows, and reaches its consummation in a manner which is simultaneously human and divine. It is a human love because he who loves is a man; therefore, he ought to love according to his own nature, which has been somehow elevated to the infinite degree by grace. With Christ, man loves his God in his own way and, at the same time, in God’s way; so much so that when man loves the true Man Jesus Christ, man also loves the true God in Him.

            Our Lord has a special interest in showing His disciples that His resurrected body is real and able to make use of all its senses; therefore, He even eats before them (Lk 24: 41—43). We must take into account that the sense of taste, which involves eating, is perhaps one of the characteristics of a glorified body most difficult to understand; hence, it is one of the strongest demonstrative arguments. The truth is that man loves the Person of Our Lord (love is only possible between persons) and, therefore, he loves God, through and in a human body and soul which the Word has made His own. To be sure, the resurrected Lord told Mary Magdalene not to touch Him (Jn 20:17), but He probably said that because, as Jesus Christ Himself explained, He had not yet ascended to the Father; consequently, she cannot love Him yet with the perfect and true love which only the coming of the Paraclete will make possible (Jn 16:7).

            It would be very difficult –not to say impossible— for man to fall in love with the so-called “God of the philosophers” or with the God of certain theologians. Man loves with enthusiasm and tenderness, with trembling and emotion, with the accelerated beating of his heart and with all the fire of his passion; human love is unimaginable without these feelings. In order to love God with true and perfect love, and, therefore, according to his own nature, the human heart needs that God manifest Himself to it in a human nature (1 Jn 1:2; Tit 2:11; 3:4) which, because it is really human and not merely a façade, can be seen, heard, and touched (1 Jn 1: 1—2).

(to be continued)