Fifth Sunday of Easter: The proper order of love

Bleak House by Charles Dickens is a rich, complex novel. Dickens is often concerned with charity and much of Bleak House reflects that concern.  Bleak House is told from the perspective of the narrator Esther, a poor orphan and the object of charity.

• Lady Dedlock, Esther’s birth mother who is married to a wealthy aristocrat, refuses to acknowledge her own child out of fear that it might embarrass her husband.
• John Jarndyce, unmarried but interested in Esther, is a model philanthropist, whose charity is directed to those in his neighborhood or connected to him in some way. Dicken always has some noble character who anchors his novel. In this case, Mr. Jarndyce is admirable in almost every way.
• Dickens contrasts Mr. Jarndyce with Mrs. Pardiggle and Mrs. Jellyby whose philanthropy is directed at distant tribes in deepest Africa while neglecting their own children. Dickens styles their work as “telescopic philanthropy” because the objects of their philanthropy are so remote.

Cable shows, movies, literature and country-western songs are often concerned with love, most often, of the disordered, messy variety. Dicken’s take on charity is that charity is messy when it is not just but deeply satisfying when just. That is why we love a happy ending – it seems just.
 
The proper order of charity
There is, after all, a proper order to charity.

1. First we are supposed to love God above all people or things. The fundamental love of God brings order to all our other loves. To love God is to love justice and mercy. We cannot love others properly without a love of justice and mercy. Justice is the love of the right order of things and mercy is the virtue that always reconciles us to each other when justice is breached. To practice justice and mercy is to love others as best we are able. You love God when you see and admire the charity of others because God is love.
2. We should love God more than ourselves, that is because what is lovable in us is from God. To love ourselves is to practice prudence, temperance and courage. We should care for our own bodily needs as well as for the bodily needs of others. We cannot make our own plans or appetites more important than God, because they will lead us away from God, the source of love. In short, love should have a prudent sense of what actually is the good for ourselves, distinct from mere whims or self-destructive behavior. To love others, our lives should be well-ordered. We should try to live a well-ordered life before lecturing another on the same subject.
3. We should then be capable loving our neighbor. Our mother and father are our neighbors and we should love our parents for love of God. Our parents should make it easy for us to love them, but it is not always so. That is why our love for our parents is constrained by justice because their appetites and desires can never be God for us.
4. But, a married person should love their neighbor, that is, their spouse more intensely than their parent, but love their parents with greater reverence according to St. Thomas Aquinas. Parents ought to take joy in the loving relationship of their child. When dating, one ought to be concerned with how a potential spouse cares for their parents. When another wants to come between you and your parents, that might be a warning sign.
5. Parents, single or married, should love and nurture their children because marriage is directed towards the education and care of children.  The end of childcare is to assist the child in becoming a responsible adult.
6. We should love the poor, for love of Christ. (Matthew 25).  But even that is subject to the order of charity as the case of Mrs. Pardiggle and Mrs. Jellyby illustrate. How can you love others if you can't love your own family.

 
Jesus and the proper order of charity in the Church
Jesus gives the example of justly ordered love within the community of the disciples. At the Last Supper, Jesus removed his outer garments and washed the feet of his disciples. He then said to them,

My children, I will be with you only a little while longer. I give you a new commandment: love one another.
 As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples,
 if you have love for one another." Jn. 13:34-35

 Jesus’s example of love at the Last Supper extends only to other members of the inner circle of the disciples and not to those outside. (“By this everyone [else, outside] will know that you are my disciples [insiders], if you have love for one another” Jn. 13:35).  This example of mutual love among insiders should be an example to outsiders. Similar sentiments are also found in the New Testament (1 Th. 4:9; Rm 13:9; Gal 5:14; Mk 12:31). How credible is the apostles’ proclamation of the Gospel if they can’t even treat each other with charity? How credible is our Christianity if we can’t treat other Christians with respect?

Love and happiness
I read in the paper this morning that a Tucson man told police he killed his wife after she told him she wanted a divorce and she began packing her belongings to move out of their house with their infant child.  He then killed his wife with a pocket knife and told the police, "It wasn’t as satisfying as I thought."  Why would he think it would be satisfying at all? I suggest that he expected something from marriage that marriage can’t deliver. Marriage is a sacrament and a sacrament points beyond itself to God for ultimate fulfillment. We cannot expect from other people what only God can give. This is the proper order of charity or love. If our love of God, parents, spouse, children, the poor and our fellow Christians is unsatisfying, maybe something is disordered in us, not them.