St. John of the Cross, whose memorial/feast is celebrated on December 14th each year, wrote in a letter to another Discalced Carmelite in 1591: “Where there is no love, put love and you will draw out love.” While St. John of the Cross was not a Benedictine, he was deeply rooted in Scripture and formed by the monastic tradition as well as the reform movement initiated by St. Teresa of Avila. All Christians are bound by Jesus’ commandment to love without boundaries and without reserve. Not only are Christians directed to love one another as Christ has loved them (Jn 13:34), but they are also commanded to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecute them (Mt 5:44).
St. Benedict’s take on Jesus’ commandment of love can be discerned in many places in his Rule but the most vivid window into the saint’s understanding is found in Chapter 63 on Community Rank. By arranging the order of seniority in the monastery according one’s date of entry, Benedict is undoing all of the social norms of his culture. Wealth, privilege, education, appearance, intelligence, age, race, and all other forms of social stratification or preference are set aside. This was a radical move, yet an essential one that was based upon the community of the first Christians as told in the writing of St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles. In Christ, worldly distinctions do not matter “for we are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3: 26-28).
RB 63:10-17 describes how senior members and junior members are to interact with one another: the junior showing respect to the senior members and the senior members loving the junior members. This mutual honoring of one another is seen as a fulfillment of Scripture: “They should each try to be the first to show respect to the other,” which is from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans on encouraging mutual love among the community’s members (12:9-10).
The quote of St. John of the Cross clues us into a deeper reality that St. Benedict himself also realized as key to Christ’s love commandment: where there is no love, put love. Jesus was born into a world that knew very little about God’s love—in essence, a void of true love and faithfully generous mercy. We presume some degree of holy love in the household of Mary and Joseph, but the world at large could not be considered graciously hospitable and merciful. Where there is no love, put love. This was Jesus’ preaching and teaching to his disciples. Take the message of love to those who do not know it. Generally, one does not add light to a brightly lit room. One adds light to where light is absent or very dim.
St. Benedict urges us to be the first to bring love wherever love is absent. Having received the love of Jesus Christ—the Light of the World—we run with joy and gratitude toward the darkness so that others may receive and come to know this love also. This is the essence of evangelization. Genuine evangelization is about spreading the Good News of God’s love shared with us through Jesus Christ and the promise of life gained for us by his death and resurrection. Instead of spreading discouragement by focusing on all of the ways that darkness and evil threaten the world, let us do more “light-bringing” and “love-putting.” May we pour our energy and attention into being the first to show Christ’s love in the places where love is found the least, even among our own families, communities, and workplaces. “Where there is no love, put love and you will draw out love.”
By Sister Therese Haydel, OSB