When Love became incarnate he did not immediately transform the world: instead the world nailed him to the cross. He promised to return, and until that time he left the Spirit to empower his disciples to baptize the world. This they did, against all earthly odds, and for an age the civilization that grew up out of the fusion of pagan philosophy and Judeo-Christian revelation, Christendom, ruled the world and gave birth to the ideals of individualism and freedom.
But Christendom has collapsed. The exhaustion caused by the wars between Protestant and Catholic lead to secularism that has turned against Christ, the rock upon which the civilization was built, thinking it can have love without the Author of love. Meanwhile, the ancient enemy of Christendom, Islam, which conquered half the Christian world in the middle ages and at various times threatened to conquer all of Europe now takes a new tack: overwhelm not by military conquest, but by migration and terror.
Muslim preachers openly brag about conquering the West demographically rather than militarily, and the West, pantomiming an eviscerated, suicidal imitation of love, refuses to listen. Even the Pope assures us all that Islam is not any more violent or hateful than any other religion, while the Islamic State assures him that it is.
The Pope, and many westerners, seem to be operating under the assumption that love can transform the world. As it once transformed Europe, so it will transform Islam. If we give away our lands to the Muslims, so that finally they achieve what they desired from the beginning, the subjugation of the the People of the Book, then we will have shown them such great love and compassion that they will live with us in peace.
Perhaps. Perhaps. But then, Love does not coerce. It transforms the heart, but only if it is willing. When Love hung on the Tree of Life, the thief on his right asked to to be remembered, and so he was, while the thief on his left went down to perdition.
If the transformative power of love were inexorable, there would be no hell, no lake of fire. But Love himself assures us that there is, and the path that leads that way is wide and easy, and many are the travelers upon it.
Before Love ascended into the heavens, he promised his return and the final transformation of the world. But he also promised that there would be wars, and rumors of wars, before he came again.
We Christians forget our own Master's promises if we believe that by simply loving our enemies intensely enough all their hearts will here and now melt and they will beat their swords into plough shares and break bread with us. Love them we are commanded to do by Love himself, but we must not be naive and believe that they will necessarily love us back.
It may be time once again to sell our cloak and buy a sword.