Recently, my wife gave birth to our third son, Hugh. His arrival has been a source of great joy for our family. We rejoice over another adorable little person, whose personality we discover more day by day as he learns to smile, gurgle, and grab. We find ourselves more settled in life—more broken in, too—and this helps us delight in him all the more.
But a joyful surprise for us has been how his older brothers love him: the tenderness with which our eldest son holds him, and the eagerness with which the youngest runs up with a diaper and exclaims, “Mom, I’ve got you covered!” Now that he’s three months old, Hugh is able to reciprocate that love in turn, smiling excitedly when one of his brothers approaches.
Hugh’s arrival has been for us an instantiation of the theological principle that God’s love is diffusive of itself. It bubbles over from the inner life of the Trinity into creation, and it is magnified by our charity-inspired acts in the world. Adding a new child to a family means adjusting the balance of finite goods, like money and our attention, so that everyone gets what he or she needs. But love is not a finite good. It is magnified and multiplied as we grow together in number and in charity.
(Nathaniel Peters is the director of the Morningside Institute in New York City. He lives with his family in Stamford, Connecticut.
