LOVE IS A BOND THAT FREES US

Here we find the evangelical paradox: Christian love is a bond, as we said, but a liberating bond! The image of the bond, as I told you, brings us back to the situation of St Paul who is a “prisoner” and is “in chains”. The Apostle is in chains because of the Lord, just as Jesus made himself a servant to set us free. If we are to maintain the unity of the Spirit we must impress upon our own behaviour that humility, meekness and patience to which Jesus witnessed in his Passion; it is necessary to have hand and heart bound by the bond of love that he himself accepted for us by making himself our servant. This is the “bond of peace”. And St John Chrysostom says further in the same commentary: “if you would attach yourself to another [your brother] ... these thus bound by love bear all things with ease…. thus also here he would have us tied one to another; not simply that we be at peace, not simply that we love one another [to be friends], but that all should be one, one soul” (Homily on the Epistle to the Ephesians, 9, 4:1-3).

--Benedict XVI, Address to Seminarians of Rome, 2011