Love is also tolerance

I found this question put to Chiara Lubich in Feb 1998 which made me reflect especially in the light of recent events and debates. I realise it requires a real conversion of attitude!

If two centuries ago Lord Stanope could say that tolerance, which was once invoked as a grace and then acquired as a right, “would be rejected one day as an insult,” it was because he foresaw that one day - we hope today - people would become sensitive to higher values, like dialogue, that is, not only tolerating the other person, but profoundly respecting him or her, being open to different ideas, building a relationship among true brothers and sisters.  What do you think of this reflection?

Dialogue, however, is a completely different thing, it’s mutual enrichment, it’s loving one another, its feeling that we are already brothers and sisters, it’s creating universal brotherhood on earth, so it’s completely different. Of course, dialogue is true if it is animated by true love. Now, love is true if it is not selfish; otherwise, it’s not love. What kind of love would it be? It would be egoism. In fact, you’ve asked me a number of questions in which you speak of a love that might nurture personal interests, even in dialogue. Such a dialogue would not be built on love, so it wouldn’t even be dialogue, it would be something else.(…)Dialogue means loving, giving what we have within out of love for the other, and also receiving and enriching ourselves. This is dialogue: becoming “world men and women,” as our gen say, people who are open to everyone and who give what they have to everyone.

I remember that when we first began to live this way of life, we followed the path of loving, and we were really convinced that love is not selfish. You must not love in order to win over another person, or to form a little group for yourself. You must not love in order to have an impact, let’s say, in the office or at school. No, you must love simply in order to love. Our motives were supernatural because of our Christian convictions. Here, we can speak of building a brotherhood, this value of universal brotherhood, but never in order to conquer others.

I have to be the first to love, the first to go towards the one that holds the opposite view to me, who does things the opposite way from me, who, in this world’s view would be my opponent! Jesus is always a challenge going beyond what I regard as “sacred” or “essential”, but is it really?

“Dialogue is born of an attitude of respect towards another person, of a conviction that the other has something good to say; it requires that we make space in our head for their point of view, their opinion and their position. Dialoguing involves a heartfelt welcome and not prior condemnation. To dialogue, you have to lower your defences, open the doors of your home and offer human warmth.”

(Bergoglio and Skorka 'On Heaven and Earth')

Today I want to love beyond the difference, make that difference mine!