Agape and Hesed-Ahava. David L. Goicoechea

7.6 Into the Mystery of the Three Great Secret Things

      IV, 7.7 And the Women Loved the Celibate Jesus

      IV, 7.8 For His Agape can Heal Broken Erotic Hearts

      IV, 7.9 With His Reconciliation of which Matthew Writes

      IV, 8 And Friendship Righteousness

      IV, 8.1 Friendship too can be Self-centered

      IV, 8.2 But David and Jonathan

      IV, 8.4 And Jesus’ Agape makes that Possible

      IV, 8.3 Wanted it to Reconcile their Families

      IV, 8.5 For his Disciples were Friends

      IV, 8.6 Working with an Angelic Celibacy for All

      IV, 8.7 And Righteously Obeying Him

      IV, 8.8 By going out to baptize all the nations

      IV, 8.9 And Bring them all Reconciliation

      IV, 9 And Septuagint Agape Righteousness

      IV, 9.1 By Fulfilling Ahava with Eternity

      IV, 9.2 By Fulfilling Ahava with Universality

      IV, 9.3 By Fulfilling Ahava with Altruism

      IV, 9.4 By Fulfilling Ahava with Unconditionality

      IV, 9.5 By Fulfilling Ahava with Childlikeness

      IV, 9.6 By Fulfilling Ahava with Celibacy

      IV, 9.7 By Fulfilling Ahava with Missionary Love

      IV, 9.8 By Fulfilling Ahava with Purgatorial Love

      IV, 9.9 By Fulfilling Ahava with the Loving of Love

      Introduction

      For nine years with the Benedictines of Mt. Angel

      and the Sulpicians of St. Thomas-Seattle

      I learned of agape as fulfilling hesed-ahava.

      With their wise teaching and loving example

      they taught me that if we love the Lord our God

      with our whole heart, mind, and soul

      and our neighbor as ourselves with ahava

      and because God loves us with his hesed,

      or his everlasting love, we can discover

      the glory of Jesus’ reconciling agape.

      As Derrida and Levinas pushed each other

      further and further into the loving wisdom

      of their Jewish tradition in their postmodern ways

      Levinas came to define glory

      as the manifesting of the unmanifest

      even in its unmanifestness.

      The two thousand years of the Jewish tradition

      before Christ was a progressive revealing

      of the glory of Yahweh, or Elohim.

      The Jewish people came to know

      more and more the mystery of God

      as Yahweh revealed his hesed to David

      and as they practiced

      love for God and each other.

      Matthew, by showing how Jesus revealed

      agape as fulfilling hesed and ahava,

      clarified its nine unique traits.

      Agape as altruistic, universal, and eternal,

      as childlike, unconditional, and celibate,

      as missionary, purgatorial, and loving of love

      gives us a faith and hope in agape that

      the family of humankind can be reconciled.

      The Minor Seminary—The Major Seminary

      From the time I was fourteen until twenty

      I studied with the Benedictine Monks of Mt. Angel.

      Their special spirituality of “ora et labora”

      nourished me in the habit of prayer and work.

      The monks lived in the atmosphere of agape

      as they chanted the eight hours

      of the Divine Office each day,

      prayed a private mass and

      a common chanted mass each day

      and each said his daily Rosary.

      Then they worked for hours each day,

      be it physical work or intellectual,

      or often a combination of both.

      We seminarians were nourished

      by our Alma Mater in the heart’s love,

      the mind’s wisdom, the soul’s moral virtue,

      and the body’s physical strength through

      constant physical, moral, intellectual, and

      spiritual exercises that became habitual.

      What could be more loving than prayer?

      Prayer is a making of love with God.

      Our Abba Father leads us to prayer

      with his grace, inspiration, love, and mercy

      and as we respond our hearts can grow

      daily in love and as we pray for

      our loved ones we love them more each day.

      We awakened each morning at five-thirty

      and after years that became a habit

      that let us rise and shine for prayer

      and then for work throughout the day,

      and that habit still lives with me today.

      Often at mass we would pray and sing

      the Gloria in Excelsis Deo

      (the Glory to God in the Highest and

      on Earth Peace to People of Good Will).

      The monks and the seminarians both

      wanted to give glory to God and for that

      we would live in poverty, celibacy, and obedience.

      We believe that God is love

      and that our purpose in living is

      to make God and his love more manifest

      so that all can love God and

      grow in the peace of a good will.

      Often each day in the Divine Office

      and at mass and with the Rosary

      we would pray and ponder:

      Glory be to the Father and the Son

      and the Holy Spirit as it was

      in the beginning, is now and ever

      shall be world without end. Amen.

      At Mt. Angel we received

      a wonderful liberal arts

      education so that we would be free to

      learn anything we wanted.

      By studying Latin for six years

      we came to appreciate literature and

      history and to develop especially our

      memory so that we