“Love is the revelation of our deepest personal meaning, value and identity. But this revelation remains impossible as long as we are the prisoners of our own egoism. I cannot find myself in myself, but only in another.” - Thomas Merton
If you gave the above quote only a cursory reading, read it again. Merton offers profound insight into Matthew 22:37-39 where Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. To love my neighbor is, in a sense to love myself because when I reach outside of my self to love, I discover what true love is and am even able to receive love myself. Of course, there is the chicken and egg question. Which came first, my reception of God’s love, or my sharing love with my neighbor?
I think this is a mathematics question that cannot be answered by our limited human logic. No doubt, God gave us wonderful minds to think amazingly complex thoughts, but God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and his ways are higher than our ways.
I have found it to be true that we always obey this command, to love our neighbors as ourselves. We obey this because our reaching out in love toward our neighbor is predicated on our ability to receive love from God. If I can’t receive God’s love I won’t love myself very much and I will not be able to love others. People who don’t know love don’t love.
Ultimately, the “other” to whom Merton refers is God. I find my true self in God and in God’s love for me because I am a unique creation of his and I bear his image deep within my being. Today is Valentine’s Day, and as the legend goes, Valentine was a man who sacrificially loved others, defying the orders of the Emperor by performing clandestine marriages. What made him miraculous and saintly was not romantic love, but sacrificial love. For most people, romantic love can be boiled down to lust. Lust is all about me. Sacrificial love, on the other hand is best modeled in the love of Jesus who laid down his life for us. Valentine understood this. His response to the sacrificial love of God was to sacrificially love others, in so doing he discovered his true self.