LOVE IS THE ESSENCE OF MYSTERY

 

 

Paolo Cugini

 

 

Let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God (1 John 4:7).

What is Mystery made of, what is its substance, its essence? The essence of Mystery is love. Mystery manifests itself in its fullest potential when it loves. It's beautiful to think that Mystery has shaped and continues to shape everything, every living being. There is, therefore, an essence of love in everything that lives, moves, and acts. This awareness contrasts with the immediate data we have about everyday reality, made up of friction, violence, and war, which seem to deny the essence of Mystery and, consequently, deny Mystery itself.

And yet, like flashes of lightning in the darkness, the truth dawns: it is quantum physics that for decades has taught us that everything is interconnected and that communion is the meaning of history. The need to collaborate in order to live is inscribed in neutrons. Love, in this perspective, reveals the meaning of history, that towards which every living being strives. Every atom, every cell, every heartbeat of the universe tells the same prophecy: nothing is accomplished alone, everything is accomplished in encounter.

All this became visible in the person of Jesus, in his unmistakable lifestyle. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, reminds us that Jesus solved the problem of war between peoples by attracting hatred to himself and transforming it into love (Eph 2:14). The cross thus becomes the symbol of an infinite and inexhaustible love, capable even of transforming death into life, the desert into a green meadow, and tense relationships into the possibility of working together.

Like a seed that dies to bear fruit, the cross teaches that a new spring can be born from suffering. Looking to the cross, we learn to never tire of loving, even when we encounter situations that humanly seem impossible to heal. The world's ancient logic—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—is overturned by the logic of love that gives itself to the very end.

This is precisely what the Song of Songs expressed in that beautiful final passage, when it states: love is stronger than hate (Song of Songs 8:6). Let us never cease to love, even when the reality we are encountering seems to invite us to desist. Let us remember the cross of Jesus, who loved his own to the end, even though he knew that among them there were those who would betray and deny him: he died for them too.

At the heart of the Mystery, the rhythm of love beats eternally, more tenacious than death, more intense than pain, more eternal than any war. This is the prophecy that awaits us: love is true destiny, the true substance of all that exists. And those who love, even when all seems lost, become part of the Mystery that saves the world.