Lent with the Early Church Fathers Day 37

Day 37

Lent with the Early Church Fathers

A daily post from Tom Bandy 

Based on Day by Day with the Early Church Fathers (Eds. Christopher D. Hudson, J. Alan Sharrer, and Lindsay Vanker: Hendrickson Press, 1999) 

Great and wonderful love  

Clement of Rome  

Who can describe the blessed bond of the love of God? Who can tell the excellence of its beauty as it ought to be told?  

The height to which love exalts is unspeakable. Love unites us to God. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love bears all things – he is long-suffering in all things. There is nothing cruel, nothing arrogant in love. Love allows no division; love gives rise to no rebellion; love does all things in harmony.  

By love have all the elect of God been made perfect; without love nothing is well pleasing to God. In love has the Lord taken us to himself. On account of his love for us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave his blood for us by the will of God, his flesh for our flesh, and his soul for our souls. 

You see, beloved, how great and wonderful thing love is and that it is impossible to adequately declare its perfection. Who is fit to be found in it except those whom God has graciously privileged? Let us pray, therefore, and implore of his mercy, that we may live blameless in love, free from all human partiality is for one above the other. 

TGB: Clements’s words implicitly suggest another verse from the same source: We look into a mirror dimly yet face to face. Now we know in part, then we shall understand fully, even as we are fully understood. So also, we see Christ crucified only dimly in the past, yet meet him face to face in the present. But only in the future will we understand this mystery fully.