We have a question box here at Saint Benedict Center, and, recently, there were two questions about love that I had to answer. As this material might be of broader interest, I am turning my answers into this short Ad Rem.
1.) Is true love necessarily sacrificial? Does sacrifice necessarily involve suffering? Did the love between the Divine Persons have any sacrificial aspect before the Incarnation?
In eternity, the Father, knowing Himself perfectly, gives to the Son the very fullness of His being as the Logos, or Word of the Father. The Father and the Son, loving each other perfectly, give to the Holy Ghost — who is their mutual Love — His very being. The three Persons know each other and love each other perfectly. There is no loss or diminution here; no divine Person loses anything from His fullness in giving to another. There is only a communion of perfect knowledge and charity.
Sacrifice necessitates a destruction; in sacrifice “properly so called” — as the theologians say — there is a real destruction, e.g., a “wasting” as in food and libation offerings, or a death as in animal sacrifices. The Trinitarian Persons being inherently incorruptible, there can be no destruction in them. So, in eternity, no, Love is not sacrificial, but it is giving.
In time, especially after the fall, love reveals itself in sacrifice. Love is sacrifice to God via the highest act of adoration, which is sacrifice properly so called (in the New Law, there is only one such sacrifice: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass), and lesser acts which entail sacrifice not properly so called, e.g., fasting, almsgiving, and time “given up” in prayer.
To our neighbor — principally our family and those others closest to us, like our brothers or sisters in religion — we render sacrificial love (in the analogous or “loose sense” of sacrifice), when we give up our own preferences, comforts, etc., for the benefit of those we love — either as individuals or for the bonum commune communitatis (the common good of the community). But in the Godhead, there is such an absolute, inviolable integrity of personal properties as well as a single Substance shared in common that One Person cannot “give up” something for Another.
All that said, I think we should realize that the Man, Christ Jesus — who is the “Image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) — shows us the perfection of Divine Love in His willing sacrifice for us in the Passion. That “greater love … [that] … no man hath” (John 15:13), which He extended to us by laying down His life for us, is a deep insight into the eternal Love of the Holy Trinity.
The Passion, in other words, reveals to us the immense love of the Holy Trinity.
Regarding the human love of Adam and Eve for each other in the garden, it would not have been sacrificial in character, but it would have been giving. Sacrifice implies pain and pain implies defect, but the antelapsarian state of Adam and Eve — their state of original justice before the fall — was free of all these defects. Adam and Eve each enjoyed an interior harmony whereby the passions were subject to reason, and the body was effortlessly subject to the soul, and the reason was perfectly subject to God’s will. Yet, they could still give and receive love from one another.
It is tempting to think that Adam and Eve offered to God, before the fall, a type of “sacrificial obedience,” and that it was a failure in that duty that brought about the Fall. The only problem here is that, since there was no concupiscence yet — because of that same harmony mentioned above — there was no rebelliousness in the wills of our first parents. This is an indication of the depth of malice of the Original Sin committed by Adam.
2.) Why is hope second in the list of theological virtues? Doesn’t hope presuppose love?
Here is the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent, the Decree on Justification, CHAPTER VI, entitled, “The manner of Preparation”:
Now they (adults) are disposed unto the said justice, when, excited and assisted by divine grace, conceiving faith by hearing, they are freely moved towards God, believing those things to be true which God has revealed and promised, — and this especially, that God justifies the impious by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; and when, understanding themselves to be sinners, they, by turning themselves, from the fear of divine justice whereby they are profitably agitated, to consider the mercy of God, are raised unto hope, confiding that God will be propitious to them for Christ’s sake; and they begin to love Him as the fountain of all justice; and are therefore moved against sins by a certain hatred and detestation, to wit, by that penitence which must be performed before baptism: lastly, when they purpose to receive baptism, to begin a new life, and to keep the commandments of God. Concerning this disposition it is written; He that cometh to God, must believe that he is, and is a rewarder to them that seek him; and, Be of good faith, son, thy sins are forgiven thee; and, The fear of the Lord driveth out sin; and, Do penance, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost; and, Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; finally, Prepare your hearts unto the Lord.
This passage lists the theological virtues in the proper order that we get them from Saint Paul (cf. I Cor. 13:13). And this is an ontological order, listed from lowest to highest. It is on the authority of Saint Paul himself, and therefore, of the Holy Ghost, that we know that Charity is “the greatest of these.” We can have faith without hope and charity; we can have faith and hope without charity, for instance, if we have fallen into some mortal sin but have neither presumed, nor despaired against hope, nor fallen into any form of unbelief against faith; but we cannot have charity without having both faith and hope.
By faith, we assent with our intellect to what God has revealed. Based upon that revelation, replete with divine promises and threats, assurances of both mercy and justice and ultimate beatitude for the righteous soul, we conceive hope — by which we cleave to God as the summum bonum meum (“my greatest good”) or the summum bonum mihi (“the greatest good to me”). That is not the greatest virtue it is founded on self-love. Charity, on the other hand, is the amor Dei propter seipsum — the love of God for Himself or for His own sake.
I believe the questioner may be thinking of the order of dependence of the eleven passions of the soul, which are love, hate, desire, aversion, joy, sorrow, hope, despair, daring, fear, or anger. Love here, being the simple attraction to the good, all the other passions are based upon it — and are therefore related to the good that is loved — so that the irascible passion of hope strives for the “difficult good.” But divine Charity is not the simple attraction to the good we have by virtue of our sentient or even our rational nature; it is a divinely infused supernatural virtue directed to something high above our nature. Divine Charity presupposes the knowledge of Christian faith and the striving of Christian hope. Hope, on the other hand, presupposes only the data of revelation, in other words, what we know by Faith.
