Great News from Pope Benedict: Agapic Love is Erotic; Erotic is Agapic!

This news is better than good, better even than great, it is FANTASTIC! Agapic love is erotic; erotic love is agapic. Pope Benedict, and Dietrick von Hildebrand, are our teachers here. God, in his generous, overflowing, creative, redemptive and sanctifying love does not only give to us, but he desires us. From the cross, Jesus thirsted. Blessed Mother Theresa understood that he desires us, thirsts for our love, yearns for our own delighted and desiring response. His absolutely agapic-generous love is also erotic-desirous. And the inverse is also true: our erotic- needy love is also, in seed, agapic and generous. When we seek God, appreciate Him, and abide joyfully in Him, we satisfy his desire; we are ourselves generous. What this means concretely for me is that the check-out line in the supermarket is much more than a near occasion of sin; it is an occasion of grace. As I view the desireable faces and figures on the magazines and am aroused with restless desire, I recognize not only my own need and longing, but the seed of generosity. And so, renouncing lust and covetousness, I move through the emptiness into an act of giving: praying for Angelina, Jennifer, or Penelope I recognize my own poverty as well as theirs; I offer us to God; my need becomes absorbed into the surpassing fatherly-spousal-inspiring love of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and I become myself a Lover, of these lovely creatures and of our Creator Himself!