Agape and Hesed-Ahava. David L. Goicoechea

lover might feel this love for his beloved and a parent might

      feel it for a baby and adoration is a kind of affectionate

      feeling that can grow as we say prayers of love for each other.

      Twice a day in the liturgy of the Eucharist at the making

      sacred of the bread and the wine we were reminded of Jesus’

      incarnational love that went beyond atonement justice as

      the Son of God became flesh that he might even suffer and die

      for us to show us the love that loves all others even enemies

      with a love that goes out to them as more important than ourself.

      As we prayed with an adorational affection at the consecration

      there was cultivated in our hearts an affection for everyone

      even those who hurt us or disgusted us so that we could

      see through any of their faults to the person for whom Jesus died.

      The sacrifice of the mass at the consecration not only brought

      forth the body and blood of Jesus into the bread and the wine

      but also as they were separated there was a renewal of the

      very sacrifice of Jesus as he died for us upon the cross.

      From Jesus’ agapeic affection for us we learned to have that for others.

      I,2.7 Nourishing Agapeic Friendship with the Eucharist’s History

      The middle part of the liturgy of the Eucharist focused on Jesus

      as present with us in the present moment there on the altar

      when as the lamb of God he came to die for us again out of love.

      As St. Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 11:26,

       Until the Lord comes, therefore every time

      you eat this bread and drink this cup,

      you are proclaiming his death

      and so anyone who eats the bread

      or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily

      will be behaving unworthily

      toward the body and blood of the Lord.

      Receiving Jesus in communion in his body, blood, soul, and divinity

      was the highlight of our day and St. Paul called it the agape meal.

      We came to the seminary that we might become priests and offer

      the sacrifice of the mass for God’s people throughout our lives.

      The whole purpose of the daily mass and communion was that we

      might spend our lives growing in love for God with our whole

      heart, mind, and soul and in loving all our neighbors as ourselves.

      We learned from Jesus and the monks who taught us how to love

      especially our enemies by praying for them even at communion.

      In the seminary we were warned about the dangers of being

      special friends with some to the exclusion of others and we learned

      that as priests we had the common task of bringing the kingdom

      of love to all humans that we might all live in communion.

      In receiving communion together we became friends in the

      common task of bringing communion to all the peoples of the earth.

      God is the love or agape between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

      Human persons have an equal dignity like the persons of the Trinity

      and deserve our agapeic affection and all persons belong to

      the mystical body of Christ in a communal personhood and thus

      we should have an agapeic friendship for every person.

      I,2.8 Nourishing Agapeic Eros in the Eucharist’s Present

      The liturgy of the Eucharist makes Jesus present in the past,

      present, and future dimensions of his presence and nourishes

      our love with a special kind of felt affection that is universal.

      The third part of that liturgy, the communion, especially nourishes

      an agapeic, affectionate friendship uniting all in bringing about

      the kingdom of God’s agape so that all might be reconciled.

      My special problem was eros or sexuality so that sometimes

      in my sinfulness like a black sheep I could not receive communion.

      Thus the offertory come to have a special meaning for me

      as I offered myself up in all my sinfulness with the bread and

      the wine praying that I might be transformed in the consecration

      and become a sacred priest set apart to serve God and his people.

      Whereas each part of the liturgy of the Eucharist had past,

      present, and future dimensions the offertory made Jesus present

      to me in a heartfelt way as I tried to imitate him in his celibacy.

      As time went on I came to see that many women loved him and

      he loved many women for there was the Samaritan woman who

      had five husbands and Mary and Martha and Mary Magdalene.

      I was especially struck by how after the resurrection Magdalene

      recognized him by the way he said her name with a love

      that let her know right away that it had to be her Lord.

      Jesus had a sublimated eros that let him love each unique

      woman in a very special way even in all of her female uniqueness.

      Many women came to love him with that sublimated eros

      that would give a special content to their agape and a universality

      to their eros even as Father Heeren had that toward my mother

      and she toward him and she named her youngest son, Tommy

      Joe, after Father Thomas Heeren and her husband Joseph.

      Could such a transubstantiation ever happen to me in which

      my sinful habitual substance would become a sacred substance.

      I prayed each morning to become a sacred, sacerdos priest.

      I,2.9 Nourishing Agapeic Mourning in the Eucharist’s Future

      The liturgy of the Eucharist is all about a love stronger than death.

      It is about death and dying and a mourning process that can be

      totally successful if one can live out the sorrowful mysteries

      in light of the glorious mysteries to bring about the joyful mysteries.

      In the sacrament of the sacrifice of the mass the sacred heart

      of Jesus who is the high priest is slaughtered as the lamb of God.

      He was born for us in his incarnation that he might be killed

      for us in his crucifixion but then in the reliving of this in the mass

      he lives on in us in communion in his glorious resurrection.

      The glorious mysteries that began with the resurrection bring