Agape

“Agape is the love that overflows and gives of its fullness, not the hunger that cries out from the depths of its own emptiness. Human love, by its nature, can never be pure agape. Because we are in ourselves contingent and insufficient, our love necessarily contains an element of eros, or passion, springing from our poverty and yearning for the satisfaction of our needs. God, Who needs nothing, can give Himself without limit, and His love – the love which He is – is an infinite giving of Himself, eternally replenished from the fullness of His own giving. Hence it is that God is at the same time infinitely rich and infinitely poor, infinitely great and infinitely humble, so far above all that He can place Himself beneath all and no one will see the difference, because, wherever He is, He is both above and below, both this side of us and beyond us, within us and outside us, deeper in us than we are in ourselves, and yet so infinitely far beyond us that we can never reach Him.”

-Thomas Merton