Emphasizing that God Is Love

Louisa Ikena reflects on the truth that God is Love and reflects on how helpful emphasizing that truth has been in her Catholic faith formation.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7-8)

God is love. Those are three little words in English whose meaning might take over a lifetime to unpack. “To love is to will the good of another,” noted St. Thomas Aquinas, as quoted in paragraph 1766 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I need to step outside myself in order to love, to will another’s good.

Paragraph 202 of the Catechism has the following quote about God:

We firmly believe and confess without reservation that there is only one true God, eternal infinite (immensus) and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty and ineffable, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; three persons indeed, but one essence, substance or nature entirely simple. (Lateran Council IV: DS 800).

I am aware of the thick layers emerging as we try to define the undefinable and talk about God. Yet Infinite Complexity gives way to utter simplicity. God chose and chooses to come into our world as a Baby Savior. The Word became flesh, and dwelt amongst us. God has made Himself accessible to the most learned theologian as well as to a small child gazing up at the world with wonder and awe.

The truth that God is Love can be grasped by anyone of any age and intellect. As anyone who has worked with children or with people who have special needs can attest, we are meant to be ambassadors of joy. Their ever-ready smile and burst of laughter ring out in symphony as a precious witness to emphasize God is Love.

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I grew up, I think, with a unique faith formation. “God is love” was emphasized to me from my parents, from the music of Carey Landry, from our Glory and Praise hymnal at Mass, from Sunday school, from Vacation Bible School, from the very Christian community I grew up with in northwest Florida, from a public-school club like Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and from peer ministries like the retreats called Insearch, Search, and Antioch.

I have been blessed with so many empowering opportunities. I gave my first retreat talk to peers at age 14. I found that I need to read it, write it, live it and teach it to really allow faith to sink in. And mine really did sink in, on fertile soil in my heart, by the grace of God. My faith, grounded in “God is Love,” continues to see me through the thick and thin of life.

I fell head over heels in love with Jesus, and I want the whole world to fall in love with Him too. Isn’t this desire at the core of the essence of evangelization. We are starving people, showing each other where we all can find bread. Jesus is the Bread of Life. He makes Himself available to us every day in the form of the Eucharist.

I am told by many others who were raised Catholic that their Catholic faith formation emphasized fear and shame and an image of a distant, authoritarian God. While I now see there is a place for fear of the Lord and reverence and rote memorization and structure, I cannot help but to favor the approachability and laughter and sheer joy of my childhood images of God.

Click to tweet:
God has made Himself accessible to the most learned theologian as well as to a small child gazing up at the world with wonder and awe. #CatholicMom

God continues to be so much more than anything we can describe or imagine. So why not emphasize the love and the joy in this life and in the next?

As for me, I want to be approachable and kind and gentle and tender and compassionate, growing more and more like Jesus, one day at a time. When I emphasize that God is Love, as the first letter of John states, I believe I am doing exactly that.

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