The Bible says that man has been created in God’s image and likeness. What in man corresponds most to God’s being is his capacity to love. And we resemble God most by the manner we love.
Love, unfortunately, has become one of the most misunderstood and confused word in any language. Some want it to mean nothing more than the attraction between the sexes. Others want it to mean no more than desire and its satisfaction. And when others speak of it, it seems that love and sex are synonymous. It’s all so sad because love understood as any of these is hardly love. It is confused: the wrapper is taken for the content.
Love is really like life. It is so vast in its meaning, so varied in its expressions and so rich in its manifestations that one has to be fully alive in order to understand love fully. As someone wrote: “The best definition of love is a loving person.”
If love is that capacity which makes us resemble God most, then we have to affirm as well that the measure by which we can test our loving is God himself.
God created everything not because he had to, but because, in his boundless love, He so willed that even His creature, man, should have a share in his Godhood, not by force but by free response of love. Man is free precisely because freedom is the necessary condition for loving.
Jesus became God’s Word of love to all men. He came to heal to heal the brokenhearted, to free the prisoners, to restore the sick to health, to forgive all sins.
St. Paul beautifully points out to us that Jesus expressed the greatest manifestation of God’s love: “Thought he was in the form of God, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave… obediently accepting even death, death on the cross.” Jesus lowered himself to the lowest known state so that he could raise us to God. In his love of his Father and of us, he chose to die a man so that we might live like God. And when he was to go back to his Father, he sent the Holy Spirit to dwell among us, to enliven us and to be the love that binds us together in one family of God.
The measure of love, then, is not what our hearts dictate or what our desires lead us to. Love is very much greater than what I now can feel. It is much more than urges I feel within. Love is, above all, the goodness of other persons in communion that is stronger than death.
In this sense, love includes the goodness of a man seeking the goodness of a woman, the goodness of a parent towards his or her child, the goodness of a friend seeking the goodness of another. Love never dies because goodness never dies.
- Reflection from:
Presence: Prayers for Busy People (copyright 1991 St. Paul Publications)
Love, unfortunately, has become one of the most misunderstood and confused word in any language. Some want it to mean nothing more than the attraction between the sexes. Others want it to mean no more than desire and its satisfaction. And when others speak of it, it seems that love and sex are synonymous. It’s all so sad because love understood as any of these is hardly love. It is confused: the wrapper is taken for the content.
Love is really like life. It is so vast in its meaning, so varied in its expressions and so rich in its manifestations that one has to be fully alive in order to understand love fully. As someone wrote: “The best definition of love is a loving person.”
If love is that capacity which makes us resemble God most, then we have to affirm as well that the measure by which we can test our loving is God himself.
God created everything not because he had to, but because, in his boundless love, He so willed that even His creature, man, should have a share in his Godhood, not by force but by free response of love. Man is free precisely because freedom is the necessary condition for loving.
Jesus became God’s Word of love to all men. He came to heal to heal the brokenhearted, to free the prisoners, to restore the sick to health, to forgive all sins.
St. Paul beautifully points out to us that Jesus expressed the greatest manifestation of God’s love: “Thought he was in the form of God, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave… obediently accepting even death, death on the cross.” Jesus lowered himself to the lowest known state so that he could raise us to God. In his love of his Father and of us, he chose to die a man so that we might live like God. And when he was to go back to his Father, he sent the Holy Spirit to dwell among us, to enliven us and to be the love that binds us together in one family of God.
The measure of love, then, is not what our hearts dictate or what our desires lead us to. Love is very much greater than what I now can feel. It is much more than urges I feel within. Love is, above all, the goodness of other persons in communion that is stronger than death.
In this sense, love includes the goodness of a man seeking the goodness of a woman, the goodness of a parent towards his or her child, the goodness of a friend seeking the goodness of another. Love never dies because goodness never dies.
- Reflection from:
Presence: Prayers for Busy People (copyright 1991 St. Paul Publications)
Let us pray
God, You are the source of true love; You are love itself.
Thank You for Your love for us by sending Your only
Son Jesus Christ o save us and all creation by His death
and resurrection.
Let us live in Your love. May we love You accordingly.
Teach us to love one another just as You love us.
Hence, we shall further Your Kingdom on this earth
by the love You have bestowed us.
All the glory and honors be Yours forever and ever,
in the Name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.
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