Liturgical Love

Introduction

Those who write about the relation between liturgy and the moral life usually focus on the formative effects of liturgical enactments on the participants. ¹ If liturgical assemblies are in fact formative of the participants’ moral life, that is because of what is done in those assemblies. In good measure it is by manifesting love that liturgical assemblies are formative of love. What is done is basic in that way. Accordingly, I propose focusing in this article on what is done. Specifically, I explore how Christian liturgical assemblies can be, and should be, manifestations of love.

Some preparation is required for us to address our topic. We must distinguish two forms of love that Jesus enjoined, and we must take note of a dimension of the moral life that is commonly overlooked. Let us begin with the first of these.

Two Forms of Agapic Love

In all three synoptic gospels Jesus is reported as stating, in response to a question by a hostile interrogator, what have come to be known as ‘the two love commands’. Here is Matthew’s formulation: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mt. 22:37-39). In Luke’s report of the episode, Jesus’ citation of the two commands is followed by the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

The Greek verb translated into English as ‘love’ is agapaô. In order to mark the difference between the form of agape that Jesus refers to in the second command and the other form that I will shortly be calling attention to, let me follow common practice and call this first form of agape, ‘neighbor love’.

Entire books have been written concerning the force of what Jesus was saying with the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself. ² Here I must confine myself to two points of interpretation that will prove important for our discussion. First, it is important to take note of what we learn about the scope of neighbor love when we bring into the picture the Parable of the Good Samaritan and some of the things Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. In Justice in Love I wrote the following about what we learn from the Parable of the Good Samaritan concerning the scope of the love that is commanded: ‘I take Jesus to be enjoining us to be alert to the obligations placed upon us by the needs of whomever we happen on, and to pay no attention to the fact, if it be a fact, that the needy person belongs to a group that is a disdained or disdaining out-group with respect to oneself.’ ³ In his essay, ‘Love and Liturgy’, ⁴ Terence Cuneo agrees that this is ‘a central message’ of the parable but goes on to suggest that when we also bring into the picture the Sermon on the Mount we are led to conclude that this is not the whole of what Jesus had in mind.

In Matthew’s report of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (5:33-34). Luke’s report of what Jesus said is essentially the same as Matthew’s: ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you’ (Lk. 6:27). Cuneo asks whether Jesus’ injunction to love one’s enemies and to bless and pray for one’s persecutors does not suggest something more concerning the scope of neighbor love than that we be open to the needs of those we happen on, which is what I suggested in Justice in Love. He says,

In the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says that we should pray for our enemies, part of what he seems to be driving at is that we are not only to be open to recognizing those obligations that come our way but also to take actions designed to re-orient ourselves to those who belong to various out-groups. We are not simply to be open to the needs of others. We are also to open ourselves up to the needs of others and the various sorts of obligations we may have toward them.

If this is correct, Jesus’s teaching is that to fulfill the second love commandment, we are not simply to react with an open heart to the needs and obligations we find but also to, some significant degree, direct our attention and energy to the needs of (and obligations to) those who belong to out-groups, making them the subject of our concern. ⁵

I think Cuneo is right about this. He describes the second love command, so understood, as enjoining ‘an ethic of outwardness’ in contrast to ‘an ethic of proximity’.

Another point of interpretation of the second love command that will prove important for our purposes in this article is the following. Let us understand justice in the traditional way, as rendering to a person what is due him or her, what they have a right to. ⁶ Let us also understand benevolence in the traditional way, as seeking to enhance the well-being of another person without regard to whether or not justice requires it. It is commonly held that by agapê in the second love command Jesus meant benevolence, so understood. ⁷

The first of the two love commands is a quotation of Deut. 6:5; the second is a quotation of Lev. 19:18. In Justice in Love I argued that when one looks at the context in which the second love command occurs in Leviticus, one has to conclude that the interpretation of agapê in the second love command as benevolence is mistaken. The context consists of Moses giving a long list of quite specific injunctions as to how Israel is to conduct its life, concluding with, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’. Among those specific injunctions are some that explicitly or implicitly instruct the members of Israel to treat each other justly. Neighbor love has to be understood in such a way that doing justice is an example of neighbor love rather than incompatible with it.

Agapic neighbor love does, of course, include seeking to enhance the well-being of the person who is the recipient of one’s love; it is like benevolence in that respect. But it includes something more as well: it includes seeing to it that she is treated justly, that she is rendered what is due her.

Let us now turn to the second form of agapic love that Jesus enjoined. The Gospel of John reports Jesus as saying, in his farewell address to his disciples, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another’ (13:34-35). ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you’ (15:13-14).

In these passages, too, the Greek verb translated into English as ‘love’ is agapaô. To the best of my knowledge there is no standard term for the form of agape that Jesus is here enjoining on his disciples—other, of course, than just ‘love’. Let me pick up on the fact that Jesus twice uses the term ‘friends’ and says that their love of each other should imitate his love of them and call it ‘Christ-like friendship’ love. Sometimes I will use the shorter and more felicitous term ‘friendship love’.

The new love command is for followers of Jesus; it is not a universal ethic. By contrast, the command to practice neighbor love is a universal ethic. Though the command was contained in the Torah given to Israel, it is an ethic for everyone. No one is to engage in payback, no one is to answer harm with harm; everyone is to answer harm with good. I agree with the way in which the universality of the command is often argued. The reason one is to love one’s neighbor as oneself is not the sheer fact that Jesus commanded us to do so. Love for the neighbor is called for by the fact that each and every neighbor, along with all other human beings, bears the image of God. ⁸

The scope of the recipients of the love enjoined by the two commands is also different. The recipients of one’s Christ-like friendship love are those who are fellow followers of Jesus. The recipients of one’s neighbor love are all those who are one’s neighbors.

A third difference is that one is to love one’s neighbor even if that love is not reciprocated, even if the neighbor is an enemy who seeks to do one harm rather than good. Friendship love, by contrast, is intrinsically mutual. In friendship, each party is both agent and recipient of love; someone can be my friend only if I am his friend. ⁹

Neighbor love and Christ-like friendship love differ not only in these structural ways but often in content as well, as we will see later when we look at Christ-like friendship love in some detail. Christ-like friendship love models itself on the love Jesus had for his disciples; neighbor love need not. For example, Christ-like friendship love includes empathy with the recipient of one’s love. Neighbor love need not; often it does not.

Before moving on we should briefly consider what Jesus meant when he called the command that he issued to his disciples in the course of his farewell address a ‘new’ commandment. Was he suggesting that this command superseded the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself?

He was not. Nowhere in his lengthy farewell address does Jesus say or suggest that the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself is ‘old’. The clue to what he had in mind by ‘new’ is contained in a passage that comes later in the same discourse: ‘I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you’ (16:5). The implicit contrast is not between this command and the command from the Torah; the implicit contrast is between this command and what Jesus had said to his disciples previously. He had not previously given this command. Throughout his farewell discourse Jesus is giving instructions to his disciples on how to live as his disciples after his departure. In the course of giving these instructions he says things he had not previously said, or had not said in quite the same way. The new commandment is the most fundamental and comprehensive of the instructions he is now giving to his disciples for their life together after his departure.

Though neighbor love and friendship love are different in the ways I have highlighted, the followers of Jesus are to exercise both. They are to love their neighbors as themselves and they are to be united in bonds of Christ-like friendship love with those who are joined with them in following Christ. In Rom. 12:9-21, Paul weaves back and forth between speaking of neighbor love and of friendship love, thereby indicating that he was calling his readers to exercise both forms of agape.

An Often-overlooked Dimension of the Moral Life

Let us now turn to an often-overlooked dimension of the moral life that will prove important for our discussion. A good way to introduce what I have to say on the matter is to quote some passages from Robert Adams’s fine book, Finite and Infinite Goods. ¹⁰

Adams observes that a good many modern theories of ethics construe the task of ethics as ‘guidance for action’. ¹¹ That, he argues, is to construe the task too narrowly. Ethics ‘is not only about how to act well, but more broadly about how to live well’. He then makes the following observation:

Helplessness is a large part of life. Human life both begins and ends in helplessness. Between infancy and death, moreover, we may find ourselves in the grip of a disease or a dictatorship to which we may be able to adapt but which we cannot conquer. Even if our individual situation is more fortunate, we will find ourselves relatively helpless spectators of most of the events in the world about which we should care somewhat, and many of those about which we should care most, if we are good people. Dealing well with our helplessness is therefore an important part of living well. An ethical theory that has nothing to say about this abandons us in what is literally the hour of our greatest need.

A central part of living well is being for the good and against evils. We face the question, how we can be for and against evils and goods that we are relatively powerless to accomplish or prevent. ¹²

In this passage Adams suggests that one way in which we can be against evils that we are relatively powerless to do anything about is to acquire and employ strategies for adapting or coping. Strategies for coping were prominent in the writings of the ancient Stoics. Adams’s discussion of adapting as a way of being against evils that we are relatively powerless to do anything about is brief; he spends more time discussing what he calls the ‘symbolic expression’ of our moral commitments. Here is some of what he says:

Acts of martyrdom represent a particularly important possibility of living well for people who find themselves in situations of comparative helplessness—oppressed peoples, persecuted minorities, and inmates of concentration camps, for example. For the same reason sickbeds are rightly surrounded by acts of mainly symbolic value …When our friends are ill, most of us are not able to do much about their health. But we can still be for them, and that is important to all of us. Sending cards and flowers are ways of being for a sick person symbolically. They may also have the good consequence of cheering up the patient; but that will be because he is glad that his friends are for him. The symbolic value of the deed is primary in such a case. ¹³

Let me describe the terrain here differently from how Adams describes it. Sending a card and flowers to a sick friend is not just symbolic of one’s care; it is a way of putting one’s love into practice. Cards and flowers do not, of course, function like medicine. Nonetheless, receiving a card and flowers from a caring friend enhances one’s well-being; it is a good in one’s life. Sending a card and flowers to a friend is a way of exercising one’s love for them.

Consider, by way of contrast, expressing one’s love of the sick person by telling a mutual friend how concerned one is. In this case, one is expressing one’s love but not exercising it. One is not enhancing the well-being of one’s friend. ¹⁴ Though Adams does not mention this sort of case, it is clearly an example of what he would call a ‘symbolic expression’ of love. I don’t much like to call it ‘symbolic’. But no more fitting term comes to mind, so I too will call it ‘symbolic’. It is a symbolic expression of love rather than an exercise of love. Of course, an exercise of love is also an expression of love. But as I will be using the term ‘symbolic’, an exercise of love, even if it employs symbols, is not a symbolic expression of love. What I call a ‘symbolic expression’ of love is a merely symbolic expression. When I need a term that covers both the exercise of love and the symbolic expression of love, I will use the term ‘manifestation’.

This contrast, between a symbolic expression of love and an exercise of love, will prove important for our discussion. For our purposes it makes no difference whether one’s exercise of love does or does not employ symbols such as cards and flowers. If one interacts with someone in such a way that one enhances their well-being and pays them due honor, then one has exercised one’s love.

Liturgical Enactments as Manifestations of Christ-like Friendship Love

We are now prepared to address our topic, namely, liturgical enactments as sites for the manifestation of agapic love in its two forms of neighbor love and Christ-like friendship love. To keep our discussion within limits, I will only be talking about what Catholics call ‘the Sunday Mass’ and what Protestants typically call ‘the Sunday worship service’, not about liturgical enactments in all their forms. This means that I will not be talking about the Catholic Rite of Reconciliation, or as it was formerly called, the Rite of Penance. And let me make clear that my topic is liturgical enactments as sites for the manifestation of love for one’s fellow human beings. Every worship service is intrinsically a manifestation by the participants of their love of God. I will not be discussing that here. ¹⁵

One way in which both neighbor love and friendship love are exercised within liturgical enactments is by the collection of funds as support for various social causes and as alms for impoverished members of the church. This way of putting love into practice is so obvious that I will say nothing more about it.

Let us begin with friendship love. Liturgical scripts often prescribe not only what is to be done but how the participants are to be related to each other when they perform the actions prescribed: let us say with one accord. ¹⁶ Some of these prescriptions find their way into the written text for the liturgy, as in the sentence just quoted; most are embedded in liturgical practice and remain implicit.

An implicit if not explicit component of all scripts for Christian liturgical enactments, provided those scripts are appropriately shaped by the New Testament, is that the participants are to be related to each other in bonds of Christ-like friendship love. To the church in Rome Paul wrote, ‘love one another with mutual affection’ (12:10). ‘Live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Jesus Christ, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (15:5-6). The author of First John wrote to his readers, ‘This is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another’ (3:11). Christ-like friendship love is to prevail in the assemblies.

Christians do not assume that it lies entirely within their own power to be united in bonds of friendship love; they must be empowered by the Spirit. Hence it is that liturgies often incorporate prayers that God create and sustain such love among the participants. Here is an example of a brief prayer of this sort that comes from the Egyptian monastery of Balyzeh in the sixth century:

May God give us charity and brotherly love

in the bond of peace. ¹⁷

To say that an important component of what is prescribed for Christian liturgical enactments is that Christ-like friendship love is to prevail among the participants is to speak in very general terms. What are the components of such love? What are the salient features of the harmony of which Paul spoke in the passage I quoted from his letter to the Romans? We are not left to our own devices in answering this question about the nature of friendship love; the epistolary literature of the New Testament offers some clear indications. Let me call attention to four of them.

Neighbor Love in the Assemblies

It is time to turn our attention to liturgical assemblies as sites for the manifestation of neighbor love. Recall that neighbor love is to be extended to everyone who is one’s neighbor, not only to those with whom one is joined in following Christ, and is to be extended to the neighbor whether or not the neighbor reciprocates, even if the neighbor is an enemy. Also recall the point we took from Cuneo, above, that neighbor love requires not just that we ‘react with an open heart to the needs’ of those we happen on but that we ‘direct our attention and energy to the needs of (and obligations to) those who belong to out-groups, making them the subject of our concern’.

How can neighbor love be manifested in a liturgical assembly? It can, of course, be exercised by making a contribution to the offering, assuming that at least some of the offering is designated for those who are not church members. But apart from that, does not one have to exit the assembly to show love for those neighbors who are not fellow members of the assembly? How can one fulfill the second love command in church? In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a Samaritan comes across a man who has been mugged and left half dead in a ditch; he puts the wounded man on his pack animal and takes him to the nearest inn where he can be cared for. Jesus intended this as a paradigmatic example of neighbor love. There are no pack animals in church.

True. But recall a point made above in our discussion of a passage from Robert Adams: one can manifest one’s moral commitments by giving voice to those commitments. It is especially by participating in the intercessory prayers that one gives voice to one’s love for the neighbor. Consider this sentence from the Orthodox liturgy of St. Basil:

Remember, O God, them that stand trial, that are in prisons, that live in exile; and all that are in affliction and tribulation. Likewise, O God, all them that have need of thy great and tender mercy; them that love us and them that care not for us. ²⁴

And consider this sentence from Form I of the prayers of the people in the Episcopal liturgy:

For the poor and the oppressed, for the unemployed and the destitute, for prisoners and captives, and for all who remember and care for them, let us pray to the Lord. ²⁵

In participating in such prayers, one is manifesting one’s love for one’s neighbors by giving voice to that love. One is declaring that one is for one’s neighbors. One is standing in solidarity with them. ²⁶

Is giving voice in the prayers to love of the neighbor a symbolic expression of neighbor love or an exercise of neighbor love? Christians have traditionally believed that God answers prayer. Those who dissent from the tradition on this point will interpret giving voice to love for the neighbor as the symbolic expression of neighbor love; those who believe that God answers prayer will interpret giving voice to love for the neighbor as not just the symbolic expression of such love but also as an exercise of such love. They are putting their love for the neighbor into practice by praying to God for the neighbor in the confidence that God answers prayer.

Correcting an Impression

I have discussed, in succession, the manifestation of Christ-like friendship love in the assemblies and the manifestation of neighbor love. That may have led the reader to think of these as independent of each other, occurring in succession in liturgical enactments. That would be a mistake. They are joined together, united.

This is most obvious in the case of the intercessory prayers; almost always these include both prayers for members of the church and prayers for the neighbor. And whereas one might expect, in advance, that the intercessions would move from prayers for members of the church to prayers for the neighbor, often that proves not to be the case. For example, in Form V of the Prayers of the People in The Book of Common Prayer the congregants pray ‘For all who fear God and believe in you, Lord Christ, that our divisions may cease, and that all may be one as you and the Father are one’. After a few more prayers for the church and its members they pray ‘For the peace of the world, that a spirit of respect and forbearance may grow among nations and peoples’. Then, after a few more prayers for society in general they pray ‘For this congregation … that we may show forth your glory’. Immediately after that they pray ‘For our enemies and those who wish us harm’. Immediately after that they pray ‘For ourselves, for the forgiveness of our sins’. ²⁷ The movement is cyclical rather than linear.

But there is a more fundamental way in which friendship love and neighbor love are joined together in liturgical enactments. The most fundamental liturgical prescription, usually implicit rather than explicit, is that everything is to be done in the context of the participants being united in bonds of mutual Christ-like friendship love. This includes everything that is done by way of the practice or symbolic expression of neighbor love. The participants do not exercise mutual friendship love and then also exercise or symbolically express neighbor love. Their exercise of Christ-like friendship love is the all-embracing context within which they exercise or symbolically express neighbor love.

Formation

Up to this point in my discussion I have focused on the ways in which liturgical enactments are sites for the manifestation of friendship love and neighbor love. As we now bring our discussion to a conclusion, let me briefly call attention to three ways in which participation in liturgical enactments can be formative of one’s love of the neighbor.

Recall that in his essay ‘Love and Liturgy’ Terence Cuneo describes neighbor love as an ‘ethic of outwardness’. Such an ethic, he notes, is difficult to practice.

Our collective situation is that we are naturally drawn to our own needs, the needs of our loved ones, and those who belong to the various communities of which we are a part … It is only with difficulty … that our attention is drawn from the cares, obligations, and goods that occupy our attention outward toward those who belong to out-groups, whether they be the ritually unclean, strangers, enemies, or oppressors. And … when our attention is drawn outward … it can be difficult to do what Jesus commands, such as blessing those who curse us and praying for those who persecute us. ²⁸

Assume that the prayers of the people prescribed for some liturgical enactment do in fact include prayers for the neighbor and not just prayers for the church and its members, and assume that several different types of neighbor are mentioned, including various often-forgotten groups and various out-groups. Then to participate in the prayers is to find oneself praying for those one seldom thinks about, even for those one prefers not to think about: slaves and prisoners, those who hate us, those who govern us. The Episcopalian who thoroughly dislikes the president finds himself praying ‘For those in positions of public trust [especially _____], that they may serve justice, and promote the dignity and freedom of every person, we pray to you, O Lord’. ²⁹

Some of the prayers of the ancient church that have been preserved for us are exceptional in the scope of the neighbor love that is voiced. Here are a few lines from the prayers of the people attributed to Serapion, bishop of the Egyptian city of Thmuis (fourth century):

We pray for all magistrates … We pray to you, God of mercies, for free men and for slaves, for men and women, for the poor and the rich … We pray to you for travelers … We pray to you for the afflicted, the captives, and the poor … We pray to you for the sick. ³⁰

To participate in intercessions such as these is to be reminded of the scope of the neighbor love to which one is called. The reminder occurs not by way of some preachment but by way of finding oneself actually giving voice to such love. By voicing love for the despised, the hostile, and those often overlooked, one is reminded that one’s neighbor love is to include the despised, the hostile, and those often overlooked.

Second, suppose that the liturgical assembly in which one participates does in fact exhibit Christ-like friendship love in its inclusiveness. Suppose it includes ex-prisoners, recovering alcoholics, the unemployed, the mentally impaired, paraplegics, refugees, people of color, gays, lesbians, and more besides. Then the friendship love one experiences in the assembly will almost inevitably expand the scope of one’s neighbor love. It is more difficult to treat ex-convicts as members of an out-group that one shuns and whose needs one ignores if one finds oneself worshipping with ex-convicts and united with them in bonds of Christ-like friendship love. When the assemblies are inclusive, friendship love exercised in the assemblies schools the participants in neighbor love.

Third, the component of liturgical enactments that most people will have thought of first when reflecting on liturgical participation as formative of neighbor love is the reading of Scripture and the preaching of a sermon or homily. Depending, of course, on the content of the Scripture reading and on the content of the sermon or homily, this is indeed one of the most important ways—perhaps the most important way—in which Christians are schooled in love for the neighbor, as it is also one of the most important ways in which they are schooled in Christ-like friendship love.