Cheon Seon Gyeong 323
Love transcends all national borders, for God’s love knows no boundaries. It is transcendent of the five different races of humankind, drawing no distinction among the black, white and yellow races. That is why the love of God is great. When love begins to flow regardless of the environment in which it is flowing, the environment adapts to this flow and develops. God will be pleased only when we adopt the perspective that can make this happen. That is why we must walk the path of love. (164-93, 1987.4.26)
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1100
No one living on earth until this time has ever seen God’s Day, True Parents’ Day, True Children’s Day, and Day of All True Things. There are 365 days in a year. You should clearly understand that the most important days among all 365 days are those days that I have just mentioned, which have now appeared in providential history. You should know that these days are the king of all days, and if a year like that existed it would be the king of all years. (92-252, 1977.4.18)
Chapter 13
Love
True Love
True love is the supreme love. It is highly desired, yet rare in the world. These passages can only begin to describe this ideal love, whose various attributes will be treated at length in the following sections.
Most essentially, true love is grounded in divine love. Love or compassion, being the core of ultimate reality, is manifested by the saint who can rise above self-centered attachments and desires. As God created for the sake of his creatures, so true love is totally committed to the welfare of the beloved. As God is absolute, eternal and unchanging, true love never changes and cannot be defeated by the vicissitudes of life. As God is the parent of all humanity and the creator of all things, so a person with true love is impartial and all-embracing. Therefore, true love is displayed to individuals who are deeply united with God and fulfill God’s purpose for their life.
True love is beyond the reach of most people, who are caught up in self-centered pursuits. Yet it is not so far off, for everyone has within him or herself the potential for love. A parent who gives everything for the sake of his or her children has tasted it. Maybe he had habitually lived for his own pleasure, but with the birth of a child his life goes through a total reorientation—from self to the other, from taking to giving. Parental love is close to God’s true love, and hence we call God our Father. This inborn potential is illustrated by the Chinese character for benevolence (仁), which contains elements signifying “two (二) people (人)”; the same elements that are combined to make the character for heaven (天). Thus love is innate in our being, through love God dwells with us, and by loving we resemble God.
1. The Nature of True Love
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13
Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us…
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
1 John 4.7-12, 18-20
The infinite joy of touching the Godhead is easily attained by those who are free from the burden of evil and established within themselves. They see the Self in every creature and all creation in the Self. With consciousness unified through meditation, they see everything with an equal eye.
I am ever present into those who have realized Me in every creature. Seeing all life as My manifestation, they are never separated from Me. They worship Me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from Me. Wherever they may live, they abide in Me.
When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union.
Bhagavad-Gita 6.28-32 (Hinduism)
