Love makes us; Angels: Day 259

St. John Chrysostom says that love makes an angel out of the one who loves. Real love delivers us from all the evil thoughts that keep us from the serenity we should be enjoying.

Look at love—see how it spreads everywhere and manages everything (1 Cor. 13:5-6). But do not be weary until you have got to know this golden chain completely. For having said that “love does not insist on its own way,” he goes on to tell us the good things that come from this.

And what are they?

“It is not irritable or resentful.” See how love not only subdues vice, but does not even allow it a foothold at all. He didn’t say, “though irritated, it overcomes,” but it is not even irritable. He didn’t say it does no evil, but it doesn’t even think of evil. So far from thinking up evil, it does not even suspect it of the beloved. If love cannot even endure to admit an evil suspicion, how could she do any evil, or how could she be irritated?

“It does not rejoice at wrong”—that is, it does not feel pleasure when some- one else suffers. And not only that, but also, which is much greater, “rejoices in the right.” She feels pleasure, he says, with those who are well spoken of: as Paul says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15). This is why love does not envy or boast: she actually counts the good things of others as her own.

Do you see how love makes her child an angel step by step? When we are void of anger, and pure from envy, and free from every tyrannical passion, then you can see that we are delivered from human nature from then on, and have ar- rived in port at the very serenity of the angels. – St. John Chrysostom, Homily 23 on 1 Corinthians

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

How well do my actual relations with the people around me match what St. Paul says about love? In my family, among my friends, how far am I from the serenity of the angels?

CLOSING PRAYER

Lord, breathe into my soul the sweet fragrance of your love, and lead me toward the serene love your angels know in Heaven.

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