There is a story of St Francis (the setting is largely my own) that is fitting here.
In his later years, the Holy Man was attended by a single brother, Br. Leo. (St Francis had a habit of levitating whilst deep in prayer, which would cause a commotion and upset the fragile peace of the community. Francis swore Leo to secrecy.) It happened that the saintly man was invited to Rome, the Pope had need of discussion with him. Francis set off with Leo, and the papal attendants.
After a stop along the way, as the party were readying to depart, Francis noticed, "where's Leo?" And the cry went up. High and low, the brother could not be found, and when the delay was evident, and the party clueless, Francis said, "I know where he will be."
They travelled to a childrens' playground on the edge of the village, and there Leo was found, surrounded by children, playing on a makeshift swing. The escort was incensed at the cause of the delay, and on so important a mission! But Francis smiled sagely, and observed, "If I had a hundred like him, I could convert the world!"
What the Jews so profoundly understand, and it is a lesson we (Christianity and the West) could do well to learn from them, is that Christianity is a Way, not a wherefore. It is a Way of Infinite Love, not a morality deduced from an Infallible Logic (which remains a Mystery and, without the Way, unfathomable), something you do first, and preach when asked ... preaching is then there to explain why you do what you do.
That's why Jesus said "I am the Way," before he said, "the Truth and the Life."
The Life follows when living in the Truth, and the Truth when living in the Way, it is Revealed when you do it, because you are doing a Godly Thing, because the Way is loving one's neighbour, as an apocryphal saying of the fathers has it, There is your neighbour, there is your God.
Immanently, we find the real meaning of God in the love of neighbour.
('Meaning' is synonymous with 'presence', the presence of a thing is its act of existing – God is act – God is Unconstrained, He cannot but be what He is because there is nothing that can restrain Him from being what He is ... God is "I am that I am" absolutely and without condition.
God is a Verb, not a Noun, and moreover God is a transitive verb and thus a Trinity (into deep stuff here ... but there's more ...)
Transcendentally, we find the real meaning of neighbour in the love of God.
('Transitive' – Grammar: Expressing an action carried from the subject to the object; requiring a direct object to complete meaning. Logic & Mathematics: Of or relating to a relationship between three elements such that if the relationship holds between the first and second elements and between the second and third elements, it necessarily holds between the first and third elements.
There can be no 'neighbour' in practice (man) if it is not there in principle (God).
If not in God, the the principle of neighbour is an invention and a fantasy and as such contra the the Divine Will (for God wills only what He is) and then 'privation' or 'alone-ness' becomes a good. Such an idea stands utterly against the Word of every Sacred Tradition, every metaphysical doctrine, since the dawn of time. A man would be mad to entertain it.
If it were true, then nothing exists in relation to anything else, nothing would hold the world together, gravity (still the most mysterious of forces) would not exist ... and the world would fall apart to less than atoms, less than energy ... an empty void ... it would not exist ... it would be sin, privation, alone-ness, realised to the Nth degree ...
To continue ...
For the Principle of Neighbour to exist in God (the principle of 'self and other') then God will actualise it, will be it, in Himself.
He will be both Self, and Other, in Himself, but the two are the same because the One gives Himself fully and without reserve to the Other, and the Other gives Himself fully and without reserve back to the One, but what the Other gives back is all that He is, which was given Him by the One.
But wait a minute, we have 'one' (one), and 'other' (two) ... but this then is a duality, and to say that the third is what exists between them, because of them, is an error (which the Greeks read in their translation of the Latin 'filioque') because it implies three proceeds from two ...
But wait another minute, the 'one' and the 'other' do not necessitate nor prove a relation between them, only that two things exist, they do not have to relate directly ... they do not have to communicate ...
... So three cannot be the Principle of Relation a fortiori because of the existence of 'one' and 'two'; three must therefore be the Principle of Relation a priori in One and simultaneously in Other.
So if the Principle of Relation, of Neighbour, must be in God and proceed from God, contemporaneously with its being in and proceeding from, the Other ... so Two and Three proceed from One, not just Two, and One is wholly and entirely and indivisibly in Two, and in Three, whilst wholly and entirely Itself as One.
So Three stands in equal status with One and Two, and each One (three of them now) will be Other to the other two, whilst simultaneously wholly and entirely and indivisibly in and of the other two, in no less a measure than wholly and entirely and indivisibly in and of Itself.
God the Father is what He is. He is what He is.
God the Son knows what He is. He is what he knows.
God the Holy Spirit wills what He is. He is what He wills.
There is no distinction between what God is, what God knows, and what God wills ... so there is no distinction between Father and Son and Holy Spirit.
All that He is, all that He knows, all that He wills, is Love.
And that is all that He is, all that He knows, and all that He wills.
Nothing else.
In Love, there is no distinction between you and your neighbour,
In Love, there is no distinction between you and God.
All are one, and all in all.
Good grief ... carried away ... the Trinity, the filioque, and the metaphysics of being and relation?
What was the topic again?
Thomas
BB can set us/me straight but I'd read recently (in a very good book I'm still reading I highly recommend, "Prayer : a History" by the 2 Zelenski's-covers the many manifestations of prayer in all traditions) that tikkun olam originally was related to a somewhat esoteric notion that "sparks of the divine" hidden within matter could be "released" to rejoin The Divine. Metaphorically, I think we do indeed reveal the hidden sparks of God when we act in such a way. take care all, earl
