“Love without limits… I am above and beyond every name. The qualification ‘without limits’ expresses precisely the truth that my Person and my Love are beyond every category known to the human mind. I am ‘Supreme Love,’ ‘Universal Love,’ ‘Absolute Love,’ ‘Infinite Love.’
“If I now insist on the words ‘without limits,’ it is to evoke in your mind the image of barriers that have been overturned. It is to call up for you the image of something unlimited, boundless: A Love that, like some violent wind or hurricane, breaks down every obstacle. I am that Love that nothing can stop, nothing can contain, nothing can impede. The enemy we need to conquer is not death. It is rather human denial of my Love. Yet nothing can destroy or diminish either the purpose or the action of that Love whose source is the Almighty God.
“My beloved children, I am not teaching you anything new. I am not offering you some definition or doctrine. I am doing nothing other than repeating what has been declared since the beginning. I am showing you a pathway. Yet every pathway is good that leads to Me.”
“Love received a personal name. It took the form of a man. It walked along our roadways; it became one of us, without ceasing to be divinely itself. ‘Jesus-Love’…
“Our present reflection goes ‘beyond’ a Person or the divine Persons. It concerns what those Persons are in their depth, their common inner Being, rather than what is proper to each one individually. In this moment we are contemplating ‘the divine essence.’ We are daring to explore the reality of God, to seek out the original generating emotion of all things. That emotion we have called Love, ‘Love without limits.’
“We need to return to the origins, to the Source itself. Certainly it would be inspiring to discern and elaborate in this Source particular aspects, specific characteristics. For example, we could contemplate the three symbolic figures, equally young and beautiful, seated at Abraham’s table beneath the Oak of Mambre. We could listen to their song, in three voices and each with its own modulation that sings the one and the same Love. But of that, the personal relationships within the divine Essence, we will not speak here. That would go well beyond our present concern and our capacities. We will speak, rather, of the Lord of Love, without making any personal distinctions.
“We will speak of Love in the simplest way possible. We will speak of it in its simplest aspects. With this initial approach, we will find ourselves on a path with all those other simple souls who, leaving aside various theological theories, know only how to love: persons who long for an encounter between the beloved and the Lover, between the soul and Love.
“Is it true, my child, that you desire nothing other than Love? ‘Yes, Lord,’ you reply, ‘it’s true.’ Truly you desire nothing other than to love and to be loved? ‘Yes, Lord, that is true.’ Well then, my child,” Love replies, “because you experience this thirst, come to the water. Come to the Living Water. Come drink at the Source itself.”
~Adapted from the Very Rev. John Breck, Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), August, 2006, Article #3, Love Without Limits, by Archimandrite Lev Gillet, “A Monk of the Eastern Church”
