Last week in my Trinity and Incarnation theology class, it was noted that not until after His atoning suffering and death – His perfect expression of love – was Jesus fully revealed as the Christ. Numerous witnesses to His resurrection verified it. In other words, revelation came after a expression of love.
A question came to mind: “Is it consistent to say divine revelation always follows an expression of love?” I’ve concluded yes. Yet, further revelations of love followed gifts of divine revelation in pointing toward Christ. Major examples of love preceding revelation were God making covenants with the patriarchs of the Old Testament.
First, God created all things for love of humanity. Here, an expression or “initiative of love” preceded the revelation of creation. Creation was first of all revelation as it “revealed” the mind and will of God. After the fall to Original Sin came the revelation of the protoevangelium (“first gospel”), where God promised a coming Christ to crush Satan’s power of death.
God’s covenant with Abraham initiated an “expansion of love” preceding circumcision, revealing their union with God. As Abraham’s descendants increased the knowledge of God expanded. Christ revealed the Holy Spirit to “circumcize hearts.”
God’s covenant with Moses initiated an “exposé of love” by an “exposé of sin” preceding the law to Israel
God’s covenant with David initiated a “reign of love” preceding the throne of a religious kingdom. Yet, not until Christ would David’s “reign of love” be fully realized and inaugurated as a “kingdom of love.” Now the grace of God is poored out to fulfill the “law of love.”
Theology discerns two types of revelation: private and public. Private cannot contradict public, as public is universal and accessible to all in Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. Private revelations either guide one toward public or “reveal” deeper truths of public revelation (e.g., answered prayer; mystical experience).
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That having been qualified, since 2000 I have enjoyed a progressive series of private revelations in my deepening conversion. In the spring of 2000, after a prayer for relief from overwhelming stress, I had an initiatial conversion experience of grace. I realized three core realities: human sin; salvation in Christ; vocational sanctification in Christ. Yet, raised Protestant, I wasn’t sure which church to attend to learn more or be baptized.
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By the fall of 2000, fully aware of this uncertainty, at work I said a prayer for guidance. Later that day a friend of mine, led by the Holy Spirit, invited me to the Catholic RCIA program for catechesis and baptism! I began studying the differences and histories of Catholics and Protestants, wherein I had the revelation of the ancient Catholic Church as the biblical and historical “Body of Christ.”
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After baptism in the spring of 2001 I was able to better discern my vocation. Due to the nature of my initial experience I wans’t sure if I was called to priesthood or married life. Having a sense of both, in the summer of 2004 I took two years off dating and made Saint Augustine patron of my vocation. After acceptance to seminary by the Diocese of La Crosse, WI, I was introduced to a diocesan spiritual director who helped me discern my deisre for spousal family and possible calling to the diaconate.
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I started dating again the summer of 2006 and set to enter the University of Wisconsin
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Seeing how Melissa dealt with her suffering with suble grace, what came out of my mouth still startled me: “I lo…” I caught myself about to profess my love for her. Not long after this I made the ultimate connection: her last name is Augustine! Did I not realize this right away because her family pronounced it the Anglicized way rather than the Latin way I was used to hearing in reference to my patron Saint? Or was it a divine case of forgetfulness for the sake of revelation after an expression of love? Maybe both, but I’d suggest the latter as more fitting. Otherwise I might have inappropriately made more of it at the outset before coming to recognize love first.