The Uniqueness of Christianity
Christianity is the religion of love. Only in Christianity does God reveal himself to the world by becoming himself human and giving himself to us completely, even to a brutal, ignominious death. Other religions profess belief in God or a divine principle and extoll sacrifice, but in no other religion does God show his love by handing himself over to his creatures as an example of love.
The heart of Christianity is the heart of Jesus Christ, which is both human and divine. Here, the central reality is not some Abstract Principle, some Impersonal Force or some Distant Diety, not some Legalistic, Beancounting Judge or Capricious Emperor. The central reality is a person who's very being is to be a Lover, the person of Jesus Christ. Christ reveals the transcendent love of God and invites us to enter into the most intimate relationship with him.
Without Christ's love, life is selfishness and decay, and man can have no peace within himself. Without love there is only loneliness. With love, men can enter into communion with each other to build true unity and lasting peace.
The centrality of love in the Christian religion is its greatness and the simplest way to know its truth. Look within yourself and ask, ``Do I want to love? Do I at least want to want to love?''Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer "fully reveals man to himself." If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity. In the mystery of the redemption man becomes newly "expressed" and, in a way, is newly created. He is newly created! "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."(64) The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly - and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being - he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ.
(John Paul II, The Redeemer of Man, no. 10)
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A great deal of the sources, quotations and insights of this article come from the tireless preaching of Pope John Paul II's teachings by Fr. Robert Connor of New York.
For further reading on the love of Christ and how we can respond to it, please see Dom Eugene Boylan's This Tremendous Lover, now published by Christian Classics, Inc., P.O. Box 30, Westminster, MD 21157.
JWK
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13)
St. Jerome tells how the disciples used to carry St. John to Christian meetings when his age prevented him from walking, and how he used to repeat all the time: ``My little children, love one another.'' And when the disciples asked him why he was always saying the same thing, he replied, ``It is the Lord's commandment, and if you keep it, that alone suffices.'' (Commentary on Galatians book III, chap. VI)
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.Every one who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who does right is righteous, as he is righteous. He who commits sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God commits sin; for God's nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God. By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother.
For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, and not be like Cain who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not wonder, brethren, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. Any one who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But if any one has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.
By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us. (1 Jn 3)
There's also a nice quotation from Kierkegaard that's pertinent.
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