Making real love possible

“Prayer and asceticism, then, are part of the Catholic intellectual life. Disciplines of soul and disciplines of the mind go together. One of the most attractive things about the Catholic intellectual vocation is that it calls us to be people of a holistic integrity. Every facet of our life needs to come progressively into the light of Christ, not so that it may perish but so that we may live in a more truly human and divine way. When human beings are integrated morally, intellectually, and spiritually, their intellectual concerns and their moral pattern of life cohere…Their relationships of human love are deeply related to their aspiration to divine love.

…De-Christianization leads to re-paganization…Without the grace of Christ, the “integration(Ed. integrity) of the human person is made more difficult, and even on many levels impossible. (Ed. the word “holiness” is related to the word “wholeness”.  Sin & evil are associated with “disintegration”.  Rm 6:23)

The intellectual life of the human being needs to be coupled with an inner life: worship, prayer, the search for God’s mercy, and the pursuit of Christian virtue…The Church provides us with a storehouse of living wisdom, and it is in being connected to her life, and to fellow Christian thinkers, that we are likely to grow best intellectually.

…Our own conversion to an integrity of life, especially an intellectual life of faith, is one that speaks to our contemporaries, who so often are bereft of orientation and who are on some level seeking a deeper meaning that only Christ can give them. To be a living member of the Church in our own times, then, is a witness to the world around us. For this, the pursuit of theological wisdom is essential. Without genuine knowledge, no real love is possible. We cannot love what we do not know. And so, likewise loving God in the truth depends upon understanding God truly. The study of theology can detract from Christian love if it leads to the loss of faith, or becomes a formal academic exercise devoid of existential conviction. But as Aquinas notes, the study of theology can also be genuinely “meritorious”: it can stem from charity, and can also intensify love, as we draw closer to what we know. 45 In fact, when we begin to love others, we seek to get to know them better, and even “study them in love” in a certain way. This is true not only in our natural experience, but also in the domain of supernatural life. Intellectual engagement with the Christian faith is essential to our personal relationship with Christ.”

-White, OP, Rev. Thomas Joseph. The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism (Kindle Locations 966-972, 974-977, 981-992). Catholic University of America Press. Kindle Edition.

Love,
Matthew

45. Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 2, a. 10.