Above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony
(Colossians 3:14)
Learning to love, cooperating with the gift of God’s life within us, is the heart of the Christian life.
Always depending on the primacy of God’s gift, let us consider together today some of the ways we are called to love.
I will love God.
This is the greatest commandment because it is the supreme fulfillment of life.
Jesus tells us how we should love God: “With all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27).
We are to hold nothing back, to give ourselves without reserve, without self-protection, with everything we are.
One expression of this all-out love is our determination to worship God rightly by giving him his just due as our Lord.
Our Sunday Mass should be an immovable rock in the architecture of our lives; not something to be squeezed in, or maybe squeezed out when other activities impinge, but the duty before which everything else gives way.
Worship is a task given especially to men: to fathers, husbands, and leaders of the community.
We need to worship God with our time, energy, money, and attentiveness.
Worshipful love comes first in all of life’s duties, before our work, before our entertainment, even before the needs of our families.
When love of God is not first, everything else is thrown into confusion.
I will love God’s commands.
Everything that Christ commands is motivated by his goodness and love.
We are not just rule-followers submitting to a barren law.
We are men who are following a person, our beloved Lord.
We obey what Christ teaches because we love him, our master, our captain, our king, our brother and friend.
There is no room in a loyal heart for making excuses for ourselves, for grumbling about our duties to Christ, for trying to get around or minimize the demands of the Gospel.
It can be soul-numbing to have to submit to arbitrary and impersonal rules.
It is freeing and invigorating to run behind a beloved leader.
I will love my wife, my children, my family, and my friends.
Not with my whole heart: that would be idolatry.
But as I love myself (cf. Matthew 22:39).
This means, preeminently, that I will die to my ego, forget myself, cease from the constant evaluation of what I am getting from these relationships, and consider and act for the genuine good of those God has given me to love.
It is perilously easy to allow self-pity, an entirely useless emotion, to enter our closest relationships.
When we are focused on our own needs, we easily take offense, get hurt, become resentful, or lose interest.
Instead, our task is to turn away from that grim obsession with self and to love as God himself loves.
We imitate Christ most closely when we receive nothing in return for our love.
I will love the poor.
God has a special love for the needy, the weak, the broken-hearted, the destitute, the seeming failures.
Almsgiving is not optional; it is a necessary expression of God’s love.
I will love my enemies.
This command makes clear that Jesus is not addressing our emotions.
It is impossible to feel good about someone who is trying to destroy us or harm someone we love.
Yet we are to hope and to act for the good of those who harm us.
The rule is not “forgive and forget.”
Sometimes we need to remember for the sake of wisely proceeding.
The rule is “forgive, absolutely.”
We need to rip up the internal IOUs and say before the throne of God that we have cancelled the debt of justice owed to us.
I will not love anything else.
This is the third commandment about love: “Do not love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:15).
We may enjoy the good things of God, but we are not to love them: not to set the gaze of our hearts on them with longing and hope.
That gaze of love belongs only to what is eternal: God first, and then immortal souls.
Responding to the call to love is a tall order.
May we all say with St. Paul, “The love of Christ controls us!” (2 Corinthians 5:14).
Let’s consider in prayer the way we are practicing love, and allow the Lord to show us areas where we need to grow in love.
