The Greatest Love We Have Known
Think of someone you truly love or have loved. What is the power of that love that draws you to that person? Do you love that person because you have to or because you want to? Does the attraction of love with that person draw you beyond yourself in such a way that if you stopped loving that person, something real and tangible would die, perhaps the spiritual bond of love between you? If you have had an experience of love, then you have had some insight into the Trinity of love. In fact, by loving another person you have been—yes, believe it or not—caught up in the Trinity of love. The Trinity is not three men at a tea party. It is a mystery of relationships—giving, receiving and sharing love. When we say “God is love” we are saying that God is a mystery of persons-in-love. The mystery of God’s love is like ever-deepening love. Within that loving embrace of God, our lives are brought into being and sustained in being. As we have been loved into birth, so, too, we are called to mirror God’s love for others so as to birth God anew in creation. For that is how God, the tremendous lover of life, delights in his creation.
—from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective by Ilia Delio, OSF