There were many messengers of Christ in the first century who taught love. One of them, the Gerasene Demoniac called Legion, felt Christ’s love so fervently that he became the first to spread it among the Gentiles of the Decapolis. Another missionary to the Gentiles, Paul of Tarsus, was, like Legion, a man of powerful feelings. He felt the needs of the flesh and the mind and acted on them. But his conversion gave him a new understanding of life. Though it did not eradicate the desires of the body and mind, what the ancients called eros, it sublimated them to agape, or oblative love.
Paul’s Transformation
Paul was fervent in everything he did, including in his persecution of Christians, going so far as to kill Stephen, the first deacon. He declared “murderous threats” against Christians and journeyed to Damascus to carry them out. But on the road to Damascus, the Lord intervened, changing Paul’s understanding of love from eros to agape. The fanatical love for the Law was turned upside down when he heard the voice of Christ, saw the light of salvation, and fell to the ground in anguish.
Paul, struck blind, continued his journey. Upon arriving at Damascus, the disciple Ananias came to Paul, laid hands on him, and the scales covering his eyes fell to the ground. Paul could see again. It was a sight that was not just physical but spiritual as well. Seeing the truth, Paul converted and became a messenger for Christ like no other.
Pope Benedict’s Interpretation: Ascending and Descending Love
Pope Benedict, in the encyclical Deus Caritas Est, provides a fascinating interpretation of Paul’s conversion, likening it to the path of the angels ascending and descending on Jacob’s ladder: Paul’s ascending love, eros, changed to the descending love of agape. Thus, Paul “was able to become all things to all men.” Henceforth Paul, completely altered in his experience and interpretation of love, taught that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud”—a complete turn from the fanatical love of Law he had previously practiced.
“Love is patient” goes both ways. A human in crisis, overwhelmed with sin or confronting danger, illness, and death, feels the passion of eros in seeking God for comfort and solace. Life is long, and the crises are recurrent, so the prayers to God are frequent, and our expectations high. Humans must learn to be patient in love as God is patient in love, willing time and again to bear with shortcomings and sin.
The patience a person learns through hours of suffering and prayer can become the patience toward others in the steadiness of agape. As Pope Benedict writes, “the Fathers of the Church saw this inseparable connection between ascending and descending love, between eros which seeks God and agape which passes on the gift received, symbolized in various ways.”
The symbols of ascending and descending love include not only Jacob’s Ladder but the Raising of Jesus on the Cross and His Descent to the Dead, the Rising from the Tomb, the Descent to once again be among His incredulous and doubting disciples, the Ascension into Heaven, and the Descension of the Holy Spirit.
“A particularly striking interpretation of this vision is presented by Pope Gregory the Great in his Pastoral Rule,” Pope Benedict informs us. “He tells us that the good pastor must be rooted in contemplation. Only in this way will he be able to take upon himself the needs of others and make them his own”—the very model that Christ revealed throughout the Gospels, the model for agape love—for love “is not self-seeking.”
Paul’s Legacy of Love
The Epistles reveal that Paul’s transformation on the road to Damascus taught him to honor others; not to be angry; to forgive and forget wrongs; to renounce evil for truth; to protect, trust, hope, and persevere in the long race and never fail, for “the love of Christ urges us on.” Pope Benedict writes: “The consciousness that, in Christ, God has given himself for us, even unto death, must inspire us to live no longer for ourselves but for him, and, with him, for others.”
Paul knew that he was a chosen messenger, but if he was destined for fame and did not love, he should rather be forgotten. If he could prophesy the future, but did not love the ignorant, he should be ignored. If he “had faith to move mountains” and gave away all his possession to the poor, but did not love, “I am nothing.” The ascending love of the pilgrim to Christ, and the descending love of God in response, is to be shared with all humans and taught to them so that they may know such love.
Paul’s Continued Struggle with Sin
Paul’s conversion gave him a new understanding of life, of its challenges and victories. He learned that Christ was with him even at his most horrible moments, the moments when the body plagued him, when, in despair, he lamented, “wretched man that I am!” But in these moments, Paul was no longer a combative Pharisee, confronting an awful and terrible punishing God; rather, he was a child experiencing the overwhelming love of God. Paul expressed his confusion and cried out, “Abba, Father!”, upon which he was embraced in the loving arms of the Father, who told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you.”
Still, Paul was human and, therefore, not above sin. He confessed, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
The love of Christ granted Paul the wisdom to understand sin. Paul’s disintegrated dualism before his conversion became an integrated unity between eros and agape. The anguish associated with the dualism of the Law—”I know what I should do, but I do what I shouldn’t”—became an understanding of his unity with Christ, who in His Incarnation took on “the likeness of sinful flesh.” In so doing, Christ suffered like Paul, like each one of us; He knew the anguish that life brings.
Paul knew that his sin had been assumed by Christ and reconciled. Even in his continued struggle for holiness, he could find peace in the knowledge that Christ understood his experience. The loneliness and isolation of sin conquered, Paul was bolstered by his faith in, hope for, and love of God in his every effort to battle sin. Thus, the apostle professed: “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Patience Is Required in Love
“Love is patient” (1 Cor. 13:4). Paul designates patience as the first characteristic of love. Patience facilitates peace and tranquility in the person whose experience of love has tempered over the years from the fiery, erotic passion of youth to the steadiness of middle and old age. Patience is a required quality in caring for others and being humble—a hallmark of agape love. Patience is the synthesis of ascending and descending love, of eros and agape, brought together as one. God taught this lesson of patient love to His disciple Paul, and Paul emphasized it to us.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a CE original series on the History of Love, pursuing the meaning of love and our understanding of it throughout time.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
