Love leads to community in two very specific ways, one having to do with love’s origin, and the second with its return. As St. Thomas Aquinas knew well, the ontological origin of love lies within the Godhead itself. God as Trinity is, so to speak, already a community bound by love. Creation issues from an overflow of this divine, self-giving love. The individual human being, supported by this love without which there is nothing, is meant for free and full participation in the divine dynamic. And the name for the creature’s love of the Creator is worship. But just as love originates in a community (the Trinity), so it is best returned by means of the worshipping community (the church).
--John Sykes, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy,
and the
Aesthetic of Revelation (p.154)
Image source: Pierre Mignard, fresco in the cuppola of the
Abbaye royale du Val-de-Grâce, Paris
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