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February 21

Love of Knowledge

The Christian life is all about faith, love, and prayer. But it is also about the knowledge of God and in that light our

knowledge of ourselves and of our world.

Sometimes in certain circles of Western Christianity things are played off against each other. Work is played off against prayer. Spirituality is played off against daily duties and responsibilities.

But the Christian life can only be lived well as an integrated whole. Head, heart, and hand; knowledge, spirituality, and service, belong

together. The one dimension impregnates the other.

St. Bernard points us towards a further integration, the inter-

connectedness between love and understanding. He writes, the one “who understands truth without living it, or loves without understanding,

possesses neither the one nor the other.”52

To love God also means knowing God and this knowing is both

informational and existential. In other words, we know things about God and we know God experientially.

This is equally true of the neighbor and our world. To love the

neighbor well involves knowing our neighbor. And to know the neighbor in love is to truly know him or her.

Equally we are invited, not simply to know things about our world, but to love our world—to love our world for the sake of Christ. This means to love our world redemptively and transformationally.

Thought

To know and see in love is to see truly.