The Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of unending love and song.
"'Sing to the Lord a new song; His praise is in the assembly of the saints.' We are urged to sing a new song to the Lord, as new men who have learned a new song. A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. Anyone, therefore, who has learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the new song reminds us of our new life."
Saint Augustine, in the second matins reading today, reminds us that the Kingdom is made of song. Love always initiates a new life. Augustine speaks of what divine love does, instituting life in the body of Christ, the life of the most radical solidarity. This is the life of being simply a person for other persons (one of the covenant's 'new men'), which is the meaning of election, for Jesus is the man for all other men, Who's existence is, in the Trinity, the divine personhood of pro-existence (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are Who They are only in Their relations to the Others, existing for the Others) and Who is incarnate pro nobis, for us men and for our salvation. To be in Christ is to be a song for God and for all the others.
But this divine love tells us about all true human loving, for upon our loves does the Kingdom descend. If the Christian, especially, does not love spouse, friends, children, victims, the powerless, strangers, enemies in everyday life in a way that is pro-existent and unilateral, then we betray true love. We become traitors to the Kingdom.
"There is not one who does not love something. The question is, 'What to love?' The psalms do not tell us not to love, but to choose the object of our love. But how can we choose unless we are first chosen? We cannot love unless someone has loved us first."
Again, Augustine speaks of the supernatural love of charity in particular, but this is a rule for all true love: "We cannot love unless someone has loved us first." First, it is so hard to love if we don't come from an atmosphere in which love has surrounded us, parental love that is iconic of God the Father's love. This is why the indissolubility of the covenantal love of marriage is so crucial, and nonnegotiable, for society and for the Kingdom: if spousal love breaks, everything breaks. Our children are betrayed. Society is betrayed. The Kingdom is betrayed.
And the abandoned spouse: what of that person? How difficult it would be for that person to feel the love of God!
Someone must love first. That is the office of the Christian, the ministry of reconciliation (II Corinthians 5:18). God always loves first. God's chosen people must be the first to love here on earth. Even if an angel of light, or even a prince of the Church, should say otherwise, mark this: it is a lie from hell to say that forgiveness requires repentance. A lie from hell. "When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son." (Romans 5:10) Justifying love can in no way be merited. For love to begin in any heart, that person must first be loved. That is the whole point of Christianity, to be in the world the presence of the unilateral and preemptive love that God IS. Then, and only then, surrounded by love, could any human possibly repent.
"We cannot love unless someone has loved us first. Listen to the Apostle John: 'We love Him, because He first loved us.' The source of man's love for God can only be found in the fact that God loved him first. He has given us Himself as the object of our love, and He has also given us its source. What this source is you may learn more clearly from the Apostle Paul, who tells us: 'The love of God has been poured into our hearts.' This love is not something we generate ourselves; it comes to us 'through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us.'"
God is love. All true love comes from God and goes to God, the immense cascade of eternity through time. Love must always be first, and it must always last. Love cannot end.