To Love as Christ Loves

Edith Stein was a German philosopher, a university professor, and a mystic who, in her search for truth, converted from Judaism to Catholicism and eventually became a Carmelite nun who lost her life in the German concentration camp of Auschwitz. 

For her, the Christ Child in the manger is the beginning of a life that requires a "radical transformation of natural attitudes."  Even in the manger, she states, he confronts the world with the division between light and darkness:  "Follow Me," He says, and anyone who is not for Him is against Him.  She explained the difference between natural love and the supernatural, brought into the world by Christ:

Natural love extends only to individuals with whom we feel united by reason of blood, character, or common interest.  The rest of the world, as far as we are concerned, is made up of "strangers," "people who don't affect us" --- in other words, people who become increasingly hard to tolerate and whom we end up keeping as much at arm's length as possible.

For the Christian, there is no such thing as a "stranger."  There is only the neighbor---the person who happens to be next to us, the person most in need of our help.  Whether he is related to us or not, whether we "like" him or not, doesn't make any difference.  Christ's love knows no boundaries, stops at no limits, doesn't turn away from ugliness and filth.  It was for sinners He came, not for the righteous.

According to Stein, "Natural love aims at possession, at owning the beloved as completely as possible.  But anyone who loves with the love of Christ must win others for God instead of himself, as Christ did when he came to restore lost humanity to the Father.  Actually, this is the one sure way to possess someone forever.  Whenever we entrust a person to God, we find ourselves united to him; whereas, sooner or later, the lust for conquest usually----no, always---ends in loss."