“Agape” in the St. Francis Prayer

Recently I ran across a book by Kent Nerburn entitled Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace. It is based on the famous internationally known prayer that has appeared in many languages beginning in 1912 and finally translated in English in 1929 in a Quaker magazine. There it was attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. In that translation, the expression “sow love” was used in a spiritual, unconditional way that seems to mean what we have come to recognize as agape.

This prayer study takes a spiritual understanding of the many life illustrations used throughout the book, as Nerburn said, the prayer “reminds us that we are the reed through which the breath of God is blown, the strings on which the music of God is played; our lives are music in the heart of God.” Wherever Nerburn used ‘love’ with the spiritual meaning that ‘agape’ was used in the Greek New Testament, I changed ‘love’ to ‘agape’ in the following quotes.

“Agape is a habit of the heart, an inclination of the spirit. Agape is something indwelling in our hearts. It only comes alive by being given. If we feel ourselves surrounded by loneliness, our first act should not be to call out for someone to give agape to us but to seek out someone or something on which to lavish agape. Only then will we break down the barriers of our own sense of isolation.

“The prayer challenges us from the very outset to stare hatred in the eye and trust in the power of agape to stand against it. This is no small challenge. It asks us to overcome our fear and to have faith in the power of goodness. It asks us to believe that agape is strong enough to take root in a field that seems choked with the weeds of hate.

“We must sow a seed of agape — if we plant a seed it will grow if it is tended and will soon become strong enough to stand in witness against the dark forces against which it is arrayed. If we take the chance and plant a seed of agape — a miracle can occur. 

“If we can get someone who is filled with hate to make just the smallest of choices in favor of goodness and agape, we are moving their heart further from the path of darkness and further along the path of light. We have sowed the seed of agape in that empty place at the center of their heart, and though they may not notice, agape has taken root and begun to come alive.

“Agape is active and generative. Its seed must be planted if it is to grow. Agape has no judgment; it is not conditional. It asks no recognition; it demands no response. Its reward is in its giving, but it has no thought of reward. It reaches out to those around it, not because they are deserving or because they can offer something in return, but because they are part of God’s creation, and all of creation is worthy of agape.

“Agape that is given takes root where it will, and its branches spread out to shelter those around it. And as its seeds fall, new agape grows and the cycle of agape begins anew.

“The agape we give, no matter why or in what measure it is given, will be returned to us a thousandfold. It will fill the vessel of our own need and will spread out across the world like ripples on the water, reaching places we neither dream nor imagine. We need only trust that it must first be given, and all else will be revealed.

“When we give, we are opening the doors of possibility in a way that allows the light of agape to shine through. And in that light, miracles can occur.

“We will learn that nothing we can ever give will compare with the gift we receive when a human heart says, ‘Come on in. I’ve been waiting for you.’ For in that moment, we will feel a touch upon our spirit that for all the world feels like a blessing from the hand of God.”

“Agape” and the Aramaic version of the gospels

Recently a friend gave me Neil Douglas-Klotz’s book about an Aramaic version of the Gospels, Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s Word. Of course the Greek word ‘agape’ is not used, but his speculation was ‘ahebw’ was the Aramaic word that Jesus used that was translated as the Greek ‘agape’ and mistranslated into the English word ‘love.’  

In the Textual Notes (p. 85) to the quote “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27, 35), the note about ‘ahebw’ is “The word ‘ahebw’ differs greatly from ‘rahm’ {the commonly used word for love}. Here one does not find the breath of compassion and mercy, but an even more mysterious impersonal force, one that acts in secret to bring separate beings together to create new life.”

That note showed me that ‘ahebw’ was just as unusual a word for the audience of Jesus as ‘agape’ was for the audience of Paul. The point is the common word for ‘love’ was not used. And so no English translation should use ‘love.’

 {That’s why I found a deeper understanding throughout this compendium of altered quotes in this blog when the more spiritual meaning of ‘love’ is replaced with ‘agape’  (as when ‘agape’ is shown in 1 John 4:7 “God is agape”).

So in the following translations from sayings of Jesus, wherever ‘love’ is used in a spiritual/mystical sense, it was changed to ‘agape.’}

“From the deepest part of yourself, let agape be born for the rays of the One that shine around you. From this self liberate your whole animal energy and life force to flood your entire grasping mind with agape.

“Help us share agape beyond our ideals and sprout acts of compassion for all creatures. As we find your agape in ours, let heaven and nature form a new creation. Create in me a divine cooperation — from many selves, one voice, one action.

“As human beings, one of the most precious things we can give one another is our complete understanding and support, each day and each moment as we are able, with all our perceived limitations included.

“Blessed are those in emotional turmoil; they shall be united inside by agape.

“Tuned to the Source are those who shine from the deepest place in their bodies. Upon them shall be the rays of agape. Aligned with the One are those whose lives radiate from a core of agape; they shall see God everywhere. Aligned with the One are the compassionate; upon them shall be compassion.”

{And so I include the following quote because the study of the word for ‘heart’ is very helpful to understand Romans 5:5 “God’s agape has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”}

“The word translated as ‘heart’ (‘lebak’ or ‘lebhon’), literally the center of one’s life, also carries the sense of any center from which life radiates — a sense of expansion plus generative power: vitality, desire, affection, courage, and audacity all rolled into one. In the old roots the picture is given of an interior action of creative generation that expands from the center.”

Agape quotes from Henri Nouwen

Among the many inspirational writings of Henri Nouwen is a book he called Lifesigns. And so from the instructions for living given there, I will share some quotes.

(Because I know of his extensive study of the Bible, it is clear that he was familiar enough with the Greek translation, that he knew where ‘agape’ was translated into English as ‘love.’  For example when he quotes about ‘perfect love’ from the Gospel of John, he would have known that in Greek, the word was ‘agape.’ So when he said, “When St. John says that fear is driven out by perfect love, he points to a love that comes from God, a divine love,” I can change those uses of ‘love’ to ‘agape.’ From here on, I change ‘love’ to ‘agape’ and ‘the house of God’s love’ is changed to ‘the house of agape.’)

The perfect love that drives out fear is divine agape. 

The home, the intimate place, the place of true belonging, is therefore not a place made by human hands. It is fashioned for us by God’s love {in other words, agape}.

God so much desired to fulfill our deepest yearning for a home that God decided to build a home in us. Thus we can remain fully human and still have our home in God. 

The house of agape is the place where we can think, speak, and act in the way of God — not in the way of a fear-filled world.

When we are no longer dominated by fear and have experienced the agape of God, we no longer need to know from moment to moment what is going to happen. We can trust that good things will happen if we remain rooted in that agape.

The tragedy is that we are so possessed by fear that we do not trust our innermost self as an intimate place, but anxiously wander around hoping to find it where we are not. Thus we become strangers to ourselves, people who have an address but are never home and hence can never be addressed by the true voice of agape.

When we grasp the truth that we already have a home, we may at last have the strength to unmask the illusions created by our fears and continue to return again and again and again.

Wherever we see people overcoming their fears and approaching each other in mutual vulnerability, we catch a glimpse of agape in the house of God and taste the fruit of that agape.

The more we touch the intimate agape of God which creates, sustains, and guides us, the more we recognize the multitude of fruits that come forth from that agape. They are fruits of the Spirit, such as: joy, peace, kindness, goodness, and gentleness. When we encounter any of these fruits, we always experience them as gifts.

Gratitude flows from the recognition that all that is, is a divine gift born out of agape and freely given to us so that we may offer thanks and share it with others.

We need new eyes to see and new ears to hear the truth of our unity. A heart filled with agape can perceive the unity of humanity. This requires divine perception. God wants to open our eyes so that we can see that we belong together in the embrace of God’s agape.

The intimacy of the house of agape always leads to solidarity with the weak. The closer we come to the heart of the One who has agape for us, the closer we come to each other in the solidarity of a redeemed humanity.

The same God who cares for everyone without exception, has agape for each individual with an exceptional love. 

The deeper our prayer becomes, the closer we come to this mystery of God’s agape.

“Agape” and the Purpose of Human Life

Recently my further reading, to find quotes about spiritual love and divine love, started a thought process to formulate what was the overall purpose of living.

The way many of the writers used terms didn’t seem to fit the inspirations I’d been receiving for 30 years. So I was challenged to come up with this formulation: THE PURPOSE OF HUMAN LIFE IS THE SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN RACE. Of course, that description doesn’t mean much without formulating what is “spiritual development” and how does it happen. 

The main inspiration I’ve received over the years had to do with the crucial role of agape. So far I’ve realized that agape is a spiritual power created within every human for 2 functions: 

1. to bring humans into relation with divine Presence, and 
2. to facilitate relations with All that Is.    

Those 2 functions of agape show the importance of relationships for fulfilling each person’s purpose in life. And of course agape is important for connecting each person with all of the human race. That importance comes from realizing that we are all in this together, and so we can help each other’s spiritual development; in fact, we need each other for spiritual development. Also agape opens each person to the motivation then into action to do what is necessary to help other persons grow spiritually. The way agape works, it not only draws each person into direct connection with God but also develops throughout the human race the capacity to expand the awareness of Divine Presence.

And that’s why agape is the key. It is the spiritual power that is creative in the process of spiritual development. It is the spiritual power that draws people together to help in all that needs helping. It is the motivational power that creates the ‘loving’ in loving community. It is the inspirational power that creates in people the awareness that we need loving, sustaining, supportive community. It is what creates a deep awareness in people that we need to do all that is possible to do to help, support, and nurture each other.

The action that is necessary to grow spiritually comes by working with agape power flowing through us. Even more importantly is the spiritual process in which each of us grows spiritually by recognizing agape flowing in others, and then participating in agape flowing among those with whom we relate. So such is not only the basis of the most profound, creative relationships while also the basis of individual spiritual growth and the spiritual development of the human race. 

But now, I have to admit the obvious problem here: each person has to be willing to sense the agape power deep within. Then not only do we need to sense it, we need to allow it to work in our life. The melancholy of human existence comes from not realizing agape power as the basis of our identity, but instead trying to build an identity from an ego. What holds back the spiritual development of the human race is the vast number of people who ignore their agape power when building an identity. Such a vast number, over thousands of years, has produced societies built upon ego-identifying instead of agape-identifying. And so humanity’s spiritual development has been held back.

The original Aramaic word for “Agape”

Recently a friend loaned me a copy of the book Prayers of the Cosmos: Reflections on the Original Meaning of Jesus’s Words. It is a study of an Aramaic version of the Gospels. The author, Neil Douglas-Klotz, speculated about the Aramaic word that Jesus would have used in the statement, “Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27, 35). The assumption is the word that eventually we have translated into English as ‘love’ was ‘ahebw.’

      When I discovered that translation, I was able to finish a major step in the research that has produced this blog about agape. Of course, that means throughout the New Testament the word translated from the ancient Aramaic into Greek as ‘agape,’ was ‘ahebw.’ And just as my research showed me that ‘agape’ was not commonly used as a word for love, so Douglas-Klotz showed that ‘ahedw’ was not an Aramaic word commonly used for love.

      So I found it helpful to read what Douglas-Klotz said about ‘ahebw’ in his notes at the end of that book, Prayers of the Cosmos. In the Textual Notes (p. 85) to Luke 6:27 and 35, he compares the Aramaic word for love, ‘rahm,’ with ‘ahebw’ and he comments about ‘ahebw’: “Here one does not find the breath of compassion and mercy, but an even more mysterious impersonal force, one that acts in secret to bring separate beings together to create new life. This root has been used throughout native Middle Eastern mysticism and survives in a famous Sufi saying, ‘Mahabud lilac,’ ‘God is the receiver and giver of love, as well as the love itself.’”

      Of course, I think that’s just as much a mistranslation of the Sufi saying as “Love your enemies” is a mistranslation of the Aramaic words of Jesus. Douglas-Klotz alluded to that when he described ‘ahebw’ as a mysterious impersonal force that creates new life. 

      Because his book is about an Aramaic version of the Gospels, Douglas-Klotz did not use the Greek word ‘agape.’ But if ‘ahebw’ was the Aramaic word used by Jesus that was translated into Greek as ‘agape’ and mistranslated into the English word ‘love,’ I decided to do some altering of Douglas-Klotz quotes to fit into what I’d done with other quotes throughout this blog.  

      So because I found deeper understanding whenever the spiritual meaning of ‘love’ is replaced with ‘agape’, that ancient Sufi saying would read: ‘God is the receiver and giver of agape, as well as agape itself.’

So in the following quotes from Douglas-Klotz wherever ‘love’ is used in a spiritual/mystical sense, it was changed to ‘agape.’

“Tuned to the Source are those who shine from the deepest place in their bodies. Upon them shall be the rays of agape. Aligned with the One are those whose lives radiate from a core of agape; they shall see God everywhere. Aligned with the One are the compassionate; upon them shall be compassion.”

 “As human beings, one of the most precious things we can give one another is our complete understanding and support, each day and each moment as we are able, with all our perceived limitations included.

“Blessed are those in emotional turmoil; they shall be united inside by agape.

“From the deepest part of yourself, let agape be born for the rays of the One that shine around you. From this self liberate your whole animal energy and life force to flood your entire grasping mind with agape.

“Help us share agape beyond our ideals and sprout acts of compassion for all creatures. As we find your agape in ours, let heaven and nature form a new creation. Create in me a divine cooperation — from many selves, one voice, one action.”

The study that he gave of the word for ‘heart’ is very helpful to understand Romans 5:5 “God’s agape has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Douglas-Klotz reported:

“The word translated as ‘heart’ (‘lebak’ or ‘lebhon’), literally the center of one’s life, also carries the sense of any center from which life radiates — a sense of expansion plus generative power: vitality, desire, affection, courage, and audacity all rolled into one. In the old roots the picture is given of an interior action of creative generation that expands from the center.”

“Agape” in all people

While I was finding quotes from other religions, I decided to post them in my other blog: www.agapeworker.wordpress.com 

When I got 37 of them posted and then re-read them, I began to realize that the spiritual power referred to in Christianity with the Greek word, agape, is not limited to Christians, but is created in such a way that it’s in everyone, but with different words used to reference it. So I was able to see that when the famous theologian Paul Tillich said that in agape “ultimate reality manifests itself and transforms life and love,” he was speaking in universal terms. 

I understood Tillich to mean that the spiritual manifestation given to everyone through ultimate reality was agape, and so that manifestation has the potential of transforming all life and universal love. Such is the ultimate power of agape over all life and all love everywhere. But with all spiritual reality for humans, there is a catch. That catch involves freedom. Which means that the responsibility is placed on us. To transform the potentiality into actuality, we have to respond.

So if we can act in such a way as to allow agape power to come alive for us and for our relationships with those around us, then we can let agape transform us. This possibility is available to all.

To me, that is what Thomas Merton was referring to when he said, “Only agape can attain and preserve the good of all.”

As I have continued to reflect about that, the universal meaning has become increasingly important for my understanding of what the access to agape can do for solving the problems that are causing such destructive consequences for human interaction and international conflicts.

Short “Agape” insights from M.L. King, P. Tillich, and T. Merton

When I reflected on, and was moved by, the amazing inspiration from Martin L. King, Paul Tillich, and Thomas Merton, some of the insights stood out as more helpful than others, so what follows is a collection of those special insights.
      “When Jesus bids us to love our enemies, he is speaking neither of eros nor philia, he is speaking of agape, understanding and creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. An overflowing love which seeks nothing in return, agape is the love of God operating in the human heart. At this level, we love men not because we like them, nor because their ways appeal to us, nor even because they possess some type of divine spark; we love every man because God loves him. At this level, we love the person who does an evil deed, although we hate the deed that he does. Now we can see what Jesus meant when he said, ‘Love your enemies.’ Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must have agape for our enemies — or else? The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. Only by following this way and responding with this type of love are we able to be children of our Father who is in heaven.
      “When I speak of agape I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Agape is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.” 
                                                         …Martin Luther King

      “Agape enters from another dimension into the whole of life and into all qualities of love. One could call agape the depth of love or love in relation to the ground of life. One could say that in agape ultimate reality manifests itself and transforms life and love. Agape seeks the other one in his center. Agape sees him as God sees him.”  …Paul Tillich

      “To serve the God of agape one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to share agape in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one’s neighbor.
      “Only agape can attain and preserve the good of all.
      “My true identity lies hidden in God’s call to my freedom and my response to God. This means I must use my freedom in order to share agape, with full responsibility and authenticity, not merely receiving a form imposed on me by external forces, or forming my own life according to an approved social pattern but directing my agape to the personal reality of my brother, and embracing God’s will in its naked, often impenetrable mystery.” …Thomas Merton

And now here are a few of the scripture quotes that inspired the above quotes:
      “I give you a new commandment: have agape for each other. Just as I have agapan you, so you also must agapao each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you have agape for each other.” (Jn. 13:35)

      “Neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the agape of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:39)

      “Agape puts up with all things, trusts in all things, hopes for all things, endures all things. Agape never fails. … Now faith, hope, and agape remain -- these three things -- and the greatest of these is agape.” (1 Cor. 13:13)