Virtual Eternity (the Serialized Novel) Episode 22 - The Cafes and Bars: Capturing Beauty
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This essay aims to construct a positive Examination of Conscience Guide, for occasional use. “Positive” means that it helps us not so much for the sacrament of Confession, but more in our daily drive to perfection. To do that, here we explore the meaning of the Greatest Commandment, which was spoken to the world by the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, in spring 30 AD, days and hours before His crucifixion.
At that critical time, Jesus chose to speak two interlocking directives.
(1) Days before:
Mark 12: 29-31 “The first commandment of all is, Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one God. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind, and with thy whole strength. This is the first commandment. And the second is like to it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”
(2) Hours before:
John 14: 15 “If you love me, keep my commandments.”
The verb “love” of course is overloaded with many meanings in English, especially these days, by social media, literature, movies and religious leaders alike. The word repeatedly used by Christ is agape love, which is distinct from the many described in the Greek. Some of the many words for love include:
These are all strong emotions, critical to life and happiness, some more than others. All can be used to excess, on occasion. These are most often used for good, but can sometimes be used for evil.
One type of love is always good, and can never be too excessive: the love critical to eternal life, the love of which Christ and the Apostles speak: agape.
The definition of agape love is not as precise and prescriptive as we would like, but we need it to strive incrementally toward perfection. The New Law that Christ brought us to live by and to imitate Him by is like that.
God apparently needed it this way, to help perfect and complete the Old Law. As Ferdinand Prat notes in his biography of Jesus, Moses’ law had three major faults:
(1) The happiness of one must be “subordinated” to the best for the entire people, given the rewards of the Old Law only bore fruit here on earth; this leads to “the end justifies the means,” an all-too-common slippery slope to evil today
(2) The external act was paramount; little in the inner disposition counted
(3) One need not be perfect; as long as one did the minimum, one was considered to be doing God’s will well enough
Over centuries, these three faults triggered the blinding errors of the Pharisees, with their excessive focus on detailed external acts, rather than the formation of holy souls. The hubris of these lawgivers also cascaded into oligarchy and a Gnostic-like despotism, as they became the exclusive set of experts on spiritual knowledge and rules.
Christ’s New Law, built on the error-free original foundation of the Old, is universal, internal, sometimes amorphous, maybe different for one person than another, in different degrees, depending on one’s gifts or dispositions or circumstances. So we ask, given its monumental implications, can we get any closer to defining this agape love that we are commanded to fulfill?
Paul narrows down the definition in 1 Corinthians 13, that set of verses seemingly selected for reading at every Christian wedding. He gives us fifteen redundant and overlapping terms, in both the negative and the positive. In this essay, we’re looking for only positive descriptors, for a positive Examination of Conscience, given how easy it is to state what agape is not (see the Greek words above). Negative terms certainly help root out specific ways we’ve run afoul of God’s will. But agape is a positive term, so to live and feel agape, we need to better define its positive meanings.
Below are Paul’s terms. If needed, instead of a “shalt not,” I suggested a positive word or two, in brackets.
1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 (New American Bible, from https://bible.usccb.org)
Love is…
That which is defined here, divinely inspired within Paul, expresses not commands, but the states of our souls and hearts (humility, purity, joy, etc.), which find their way into our actions and outward expressions (praise, forgiveness, respect, obedience, perseverance, etc.)
If here we turn Paul’s agape definition into positive characteristics and manners of action, emotions, and living, they fall rather neatly into the typical definitions for each of the eight Beatitudes. Thus they trace their way back to the words Christ speaks roughly twenty months before he gave us the Greatest Commandment, as He sat on the grass on the Mount, overlooking the Sea of Galilee about two miles from Capernaum, on that beautiful morning in July 28 AD.
Like Paul’s words, the words Jesus uses, expressed in Matthew 5:1-8, are not commands, but the state of our hearts:
Here are some common definitions and interpretations of those who are “blessed”.
The poor in spirit
Those who mourn
The meek
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice
The merciful
The pure of heart
The peacemakers
The persecuted
The Beatitudes, when mapped to one or more of the fifteen attributes put forth by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, provide as complete a definition of agape love as ever could be expressed. So the Beatitudes guide us in how to define that love commanded us by Christ; that is, the agape that we are called to feel, radiate, imitate, contemplate, and supply back to the Holy Trinity, and to other souls.
Thus, Christ’s most prolific Sermon, spoken by Jesus about 20 months before His death and resurrection, projects forward to His Greatest Commandment, spoken days and hours before His Passion. The Beatitudes hone in on how the Holy Trinity wants us to love others and to love God back. Below the Beatitudes are mapped to the Agape definitions.
The most helpful notion here is to build one's own mapping - think about Paul's and Christ's words, research the meanings and interpretations, write them down, and then examine. The results are a basis for a positive Examination of Conscience, which here ponders not what we did wrong, but how and why we could be perfect, in our daily relationship with the Holy Trinity and our neighbors.
Summary: Mapping Paul’s Agape to The Beatitudes
patient
kind
praising/thankful
humble/quiet
humble/subdued
respectful
deferential/obedient
peaceful
forgiving
pure
rejoices with the right
bears all things
believes all things
hopes all things
endures all things
Summary: Mapping the Beatitudes to Paul’s Agape
The poor in spirit – humble/subdued, deferential/obedient
Those who mourn - bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things
The meek - praising/thankful, humble/quiet, deferential/obedient
Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice - rejoices with the right, hopes all things
The merciful – kind, respectful, forgiving
The pure of heart – pure, rejoices with the right
The peacemakers – patient, praising/thankful, peaceful
The persecuted - bears all things, endures all things
Christopher Rogers is the author of the novel Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s-Retro Florida Techno Pro-life Love Story and Conversion Journey, which dramatizes a story about the Catholic conversion of two twenty-somethings in the 90s, interleaving a story about love, hookups, corporate and social culture in the 90s, technical intrigue, and a journey to the Holy Trinity. The novel is available here, at the Catholic Corner, which is on Mike Church's Crusade Channel website or any other major online bookseller. “Virtual Eternity is a contemporary fiction written by Christopher Rogers that I read and fell in love with. Its rare to find a book that treats of our modern hook-up culture and then honors its antithesis: Sacramental marriage. Rogers does this while weaving his characters through a Big-Tech thriller. Christian readers will appreciate this work as entertainment, done right.” – Mike Church Virtual Eternity is also available in serialized form for free; start reading here.
Christopher is married and has helped raise a family of three children, while also working as a human factors engineer and project manager in the fields of healthcare, intelligence, military, aerospace, and manufacturing. He has Master’s degrees in Humanities (Houston-Clear Lake) and Industrial Engineering (Auburn). Christopher belongs to the Discalced Carmelite Secular Order. He is also the author of the novel Dumb College: A Story about the Decline of Western Civilization.
