On the feast of Christ the King, Sr. Esther Fangman offered the
sisters of Mount St. Scholastica a few suggestions about what the kingdom of
God is like. One that especially caught my attention was this: “In the
kingdom of God, power dissolves into love.”
This concept should not be surprising; it simply requires
looking at the universe from a different perspective, as scientists did when
they discovered that the Pando aspen grove in Utah is not in fact more than
40,000 individual trees but one tree that originated from a single seed and
spreads by sending up new shoots from its expanding root system. Similarly, God’s
love is the single seed from which we all sprout, and that seed expands through
the interconnected roots of all that lives. As trees that become weak through
age or disease fall to the ground and die, becoming a source of nourishment for
the roots below, humans who are afflicted by love of power, greed, or pride
will die and dissolve back into the love from whence they came.
The sacrifice love demands is the camouflage that prevents
us from seeing that love is the substance of the universe. As one hymn
proclaims, “The king of love my shepherd is,” but that love required Jesus to
sacrifice the comforts of home, family, possessions, and his own desires and ultimately led
to his death. Love may be the essence of who we are, but it is not easy to
practice. At such times, it is comforting to remember that at the end of life
as we know it, we too will dissolve into love.
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