What is Love? Fr. Rafail Noica on Judas
I would say God doesn’t have love (because what you have, you can lose), but God is love, and this love never changes. If we are friends or if we are enemies, if our name is John or Peter or Judas
What is love? I want to say I don’t know, and may God enlighten you and enlighten all of us so that we know what it is. But, if I ventured on this dangerous path, let me try to say some words about it. I think we can take as a model Christ on the cross. We should understand Him correctly as the expression of love’s culmination, because He Himself says “greater love has no one but this, to give one’s life for one’s friends”. Who are Christ’s friends? First of all, He says “you are My friends if you do what I command you”. But Christ told us we should love our enemies too. Christ, however, doesn’t command that we do something, but the divine commandments are a revelation of what God is (either Chris incarnated, or Chris born in our hearts). Were we to paraphrase Christ’s words “love your enemies”, we could say “I, God, love even my enemies”. Why does God love His enemies? Is there a limit to Christ’s love? I would say that God doesn’t have love (because what you have, you can lose), but God is love, and this love never changes. If we are friends or if we are enemies, if our name is John or Peter or Judas, Christ’s love remains unchanged.
If you look attentively, you’ll see how in the four Gospels, especially during the evening of the Last Supper, Christ tried many times and in many ways to tear what was written for Judas, the prophesied deed, just like God tore the prophesied deed for the Ninevites, in the days of the Prophet Jonah, when Jonah preached to the Ninevites: “You will all perish, you and your herds, if you don’t repent”. They repented and they didn’t perish. So God stopped His own prophecy, out of love, when His prophecy was to the disadvantage of human beings, His beloved creatures. He also wanted to stop the prophecy about Judas. Look at the first verses from Holy Thursday, at the reading of the Twelve Gospels. After the first Gospel reading, there are several verses, and each one shows in what way, in what different way did Christ try to wake Judas up, to take some words out of Judas, through which Christ could say “Let it be to you according to your faith”, or “Your sins are forgiven”, or anything to erase, to tear the written deed. When I say “tear the written deed”, many of you know that I am quoting the Troparion from Great Lent, from the sixth hour: “O Christ God, on the sixth day and hour, You nailed to the Cross the sin which rebellious Adam committed in paradise. Tear asunder also the bonds of our iniquity, and save us!” Christ breaks down the bonds which are against us.
One thing only is planned by God: life (and if there is death, then there is resurrection). But there is a gift which God gave to his creatures, to angels, and to human beings, the most terrifying of all gifts: freedom. God doesn’t allow Himself - because of His love, paradoxically - to limit the freedom of His creation. This gift allows humankind (just like the angels) to have the terrifying possibility to tell God, in the end: “Alright, but I don’t want this”. By the same logic, humankind also can tell Hell “Alright, but I don’t believe you”. In Dante’s Inferno, he talks about the descent of the main character into Hell, through a gate above which is written “Abandon all hope ye who enter here”, and I say, that is the voice of Hell. What does God say through St. Silouan? He says, “No, do not abandon hope” but “Keep thy mind in Hell and despair not” - and in an instant, Hell was torn apart for Silouan and for all who follow God’s words.
Hell, in itself, has no reality. Hell is the apogee of lies. If you will, in post-modern language, computer science offers us an expression: virtual reality. The notion of sin is again expressed by a post-modern expression: ‘nature identical’ (we have, in the food industry, these commercial flavorings which are chemically produced and are called ‘nature identical’ but are not natural) - and this is another expression, another paraphrase and synonym of the word ‘lie’. Sin is nature identical but not natural, it is not the nature that God gave us. Hell is virtual reality. If you take the power cord out of the electrical socket, it is gone. What is the power cord? It is the work of lies, it is pride. What is pride? I will start with the pride of the first to fall, the greatest and most beautiful angel, Lucifer, which became Satan, which means the enemy. We have a description of him and his fall in the Book of Isaiah, in the prophecy about the ruler of Babylon (but, transparently, we see the fall of the first angel here). This ruler of Babylon says “I will be like the Most High, I will set my seat above the heavens”. And this is how the first angel thought as well. He wanted to be like the Most High, he got drunk with his own beauty - made by God, gifted to him by God - instead of thanking God, like the Saints and the Holy Angels do.
Excerpt from:
Hieromonk Rafail Noica - Conference: “What is the Human Being?”
Alba Iulia, November 23, 2006
Translated by Grig Gheorghiu