Love Does Not Count
Christmas Night. Fr Timothy Radcliffe preaches on the uncalculating mystery of divine love.
‘In those days a degree went out from the Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.’ There is to be a census. Everyone must be counted so that they can be made to pay their taxes. The word translated by ‘all the world’ is related to ‘economics’. This is an exercise of imperial power. Augustus is exercising control of the Empire.
This story of counting and of control is just the backdrop for a vastly more fascinating drama. Ironically, the census will take Jesus, the Son of David, to the place where he must be born. There he will be seen by the shepherds, who are marginal figures who did not count for much and who were probably never registered on any census. The heavens are filled with the uncountable multitude of angels. For in this child, the way is opened beyond all calculation and measurement into the boundless mystery of love.
Of course, counting is vital if we are to have a functioning economy, if we are to have care of people’s health and measure their blood pressure, for example, or even when a Pope is elected. But if the only things that count are those that can be counted, our humanity becomes diminished. King David is punished for counting the people of Israel (1 Chronicles 2:1). This is a divine right of our God who can count even the number of hairs on our head.
Tyrannical governments reduce human beings to numbers: Primo Levi wrote of his arrival at the concentration camp of Auschwitz in 1944, ‘They have even taken away our names…..My number is 174517; we have been baptised, we will carry the tattoo on our left arm until we die.’
We are made for a love that cannot be measured. God does not promise Abraham and Sarah 2.7 children, but a progeny more numerous than the sand on the seashore. He gives trees millions of leaves, and we cannot even begin to count the species of beetles, for which God seems to have a soft spot. Our God is extravagantly prodigal.
We are called, as St Ignatius of Loyola said, ‘to give and not to count the cost.’ How much calculation enters into our relationships? ‘I cooked dinner three times last week, but she did so only twice’.’ I gave him a present worth £25 and his was only worth a tenner’. ‘It’s your turn to take out the rubbish. I did it the last five times.’ But true love does not count. Leo the Great, the fifth century Pope, wrote: ‘For if God is love, love must have no limit because God cannot be confined within any bounds.’
The angels appear on high, defying gravity. This year we celebrated the canonisation of the Dominican layman, St Pier Giorgio Frassati. He pinned a note on his door: ‘Mountains, mountains, mountains, I love you.’ He wrote in his diary, ‘Every day that passes, I fall more desperately in love with the mountains… I am ever more determined to climb the mountains, to scale the mighty peaks, to feel that pure joy which can only be felt in the mountains.’ His motto was Verso l’Alto: Towards the heights.
In the film Wicked, there is a song ‘Defying Gravity.’
It’s time to try/Defying gravity
I’m flying high – Unlimited.
At Christmas we remember that our God, who is infinite love, submitted himself to our limitations, born in a world under the sway of the Imperial Roman power, which will eventually kill him. He did so that the way may be opened for us into boundless love. Let us be liberated by his grace from all calculation in our loving. May the glory of the Lord illuminate our eyes so that we see every child, even the unborn, as having the measureless dignity of the brothers and sisters of the new-born child.
Readings (for Midnight Mass): Isaiah 9:1-7 | Titus 2:11-14 | Luke 2:1-14
Image: detail from a painting in the Basilica of the Nativity, Bethlehem, photographed by Dan Lundberg (CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic)
