8.4 And Jesus’ Agape makes that Possible
IV, 8.3 Wanted it to Reconcile their Families
IV, 8.5 For his Disciples were Friends
IV, 8.6 Working with an Angelic Celibacy for All
IV, 8.7 And Righteously Obeying Him
IV, 8.8 By going out to baptize all the nations
IV, 8.9 And Bring them all Reconciliation
IV, 9 And Septuagint Agape Righteousness
IV, 9.1 By Fulfilling Ahava with Eternity
IV, 9.2 By Fulfilling Ahava with Universality
IV, 9.3 By Fulfilling Ahava with Altruism
IV, 9.4 By Fulfilling Ahava with Unconditionality
IV, 9.5 By Fulfilling Ahava with Childlikeness
IV, 9.6 By Fulfilling Ahava with Celibacy
IV, 9.7 By Fulfilling Ahava with Missionary Love
IV, 9.8 By Fulfilling Ahava with Purgatorial Love
IV, 9.9 By Fulfilling Ahava with the Loving of Love
Introduction
For nine years with the Benedictines of Mt. Angel
and the Sulpicians of St. Thomas-Seattle
I learned of agape as fulfilling hesed-ahava.
With their wise teaching and loving example
they taught me that if we love the Lord our God
with our whole heart, mind, and soul
and our neighbor as ourselves with ahava
and because God loves us with his hesed,
or his everlasting love, we can discover
the glory of Jesus’ reconciling agape.
As Derrida and Levinas pushed each other
further and further into the loving wisdom
of their Jewish tradition in their postmodern ways
Levinas came to define glory
as the manifesting of the unmanifest
even in its unmanifestness.
The two thousand years of the Jewish tradition
before Christ was a progressive revealing
of the glory of Yahweh, or Elohim.
The Jewish people came to know
more and more the mystery of God
as Yahweh revealed his hesed to David
and as they practiced
love for God and each other.
Matthew, by showing how Jesus revealed
agape as fulfilling hesed and ahava,
clarified its nine unique traits.
Agape as altruistic, universal, and eternal,
as childlike, unconditional, and celibate,
as missionary, purgatorial, and loving of love
gives us a faith and hope in agape that
the family of humankind can be reconciled.
The Minor Seminary—The Major Seminary
From the time I was fourteen until twenty
I studied with the Benedictine Monks of Mt. Angel.
Their special spirituality of “ora et labora”
nourished me in the habit of prayer and work.
The monks lived in the atmosphere of agape
as they chanted the eight hours
of the Divine Office each day,
prayed a private mass and
a common chanted mass each day
and each said his daily Rosary.
Then they worked for hours each day,
be it physical work or intellectual,
or often a combination of both.
We seminarians were nourished
by our Alma Mater in the heart’s love,
the mind’s wisdom, the soul’s moral virtue,
and the body’s physical strength through
constant physical, moral, intellectual, and
spiritual exercises that became habitual.
What could be more loving than prayer?
Prayer is a making of love with God.
Our Abba Father leads us to prayer
with his grace, inspiration, love, and mercy
and as we respond our hearts can grow
daily in love and as we pray for
our loved ones we love them more each day.
We awakened each morning at five-thirty
and after years that became a habit
that let us rise and shine for prayer
and then for work throughout the day,
and that habit still lives with me today.
Often at mass we would pray and sing
the Gloria in Excelsis Deo
(the Glory to God in the Highest and
on Earth Peace to People of Good Will).
The monks and the seminarians both
wanted to give glory to God and for that
we would live in poverty, celibacy, and obedience.
We
