Creation was created out of love, and it is preserved in love. Love is the foundation of all that exists. Love unites, bringing all things together, doing so, neither monistically nor dualistically, but interdependently. Love is capable of raising that which is ontologically lower to experience the life and ways of that which is higher; love can bring about the reconciliation of all, so that in the end, God can and will be all in all.
How can we understand love? What does love do to those in love? A lover joins himself to his beloved, for he willingly gives over his very being to his beloved: he empties himself of all that he is, and gives it as a gift to his beloved, for her to do as she will. But the lover takes it within her, and unites herself with her lover. And it is in that union the lover regains what he has given up, for the beloved also gives to her love all that she has, and this, of course, includes that which she received from her beloved, that is himself. But now he is transformed through love. What he gets back is himself, but it is himself in the light of love, and therefore, made new. As long as lovers remain united, they continuously share their being with each other, neither of them said to possess themselves in themselves, but only, through the mediation of their beloved: that is, through love, they find themselves to be persons, filled with an ever-increasing newness, instead of individuals stuck in themselves, unable to experience the glory of being.
This is true, not only between two human lovers, but also between the love between God and humanity. For God has given himself to us, emptied himself so that he can show his love (the incarnation is a Trinitarian event, even if it is only the person of the Word who has become man). Will we respond, and give back everything, including ourselves, so that we can experience the newness of being, the new life which only God can give to us? And this is the difference between the human and divine experience of the fact of love: the glory of human love is only analogous the glory of divine love; human love is finite, divine love is infinite; human love keeps one within the order of creation, divine love raises us back up so that we can participate in the Divine Life of the Trinity itself. But the greatness of the divine love does not tell us to forgo human love, but rather, as God is love, and desires to share itself with humanity, it seeks the united love of humanity to be given to it, just as the whole Trinity, and not just the Son, shares with us the love of God.
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