LOVING AS GOD LOVES US

TUESDAY AFTER EPIPHANY SUNDAY

1 Jn 4:7-10; Ps 72:1-4; MK 6:34-44

Learning to love from God

God is the supreme Spirit and the Father of all spirits. The will of God is the source of all being. The dwelling of the Word of God in our flesh is therefore a source of love and motivation for us men. The reason he appeared in our nature is that he may demonstrate for us the love of the Father, thereby motivating us to love God in return and desire to do his holy will. The love of God for us is manifest in creation and in our daily living, but because we rarely pay attention to the spiritual foundations of our daily physical realities, it is difficult for us to perceive the love and providential care with which the heavenly Father orders our daily events. The ignorance of divine providence in our lives is a result of the darkness that covers the nations and peoples. Thus, the Word of God, who is Light from Light, assumed our nature and lived among us to rekindle the spiritual light within us. With the Incarnation of the Son of God, we have received the spiritual sight to see the love of the Father daily in our lives. We must believe in the Incarnation to experience the presence of spiritual light and walk in the light of our faith in Him daily. To ignore his enduring presence among us after we have made a profession of faith in his birth, life, death, and resurrection is to walk away from the shining spiritual Sun. To forget what he has done among us and for us is to prefer and walk in darkness.

Such forgetfulness would deprive us of his graces, which are made abundant to those who wait on him. Deprived of grace, we see the resurgence of sins in our lives: foul thoughts, words, and behaviour, anger, dissension, and quarrel, unforgiveness, malice, hatred, greed, etc. These weeds sprout when we sleep or slumber in place of prayerful vigilance. Hence, Saint John says that our loving one another shows we are connected to God. “My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.” To keep this love of God burning in our hearts, we must keep our focus on Jesus Christ, for he shows us how much the Father loves and cares for us. “God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son, so we could have life through him.” Our apprehension of God’s love for us causes our spirit to come alive again. In the same vein, to forget the love is to lose the spiritual life that flows from God’s love for us. The will of God is therefore the cause of our spiritual life; this means it is secure because the divine will is eternal. It suffers insecurity and instability only from us, our vulnerability to distraction from the world and its sensible pleasures and pains, which the evil one employed to lure us away from the love of God, constantly manifested in Jesus Christ.

Our Lord is well pleased when we forget ourselves in order to remain in his presence always. To remain in the presence of Jesus Christ is to do the will of God, because that is why he sent his Son to us. To show his approval of the steadfastness of the crowd who followed him in the Gospel, he fed them both spiritually and physically; he worked a miracle of loaves for them. “As Jesus stepped ashore, he saw a large crowd; and he took pity on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he set himself to teach them at some length.” We take note of the fact that he fed them spiritually first before considering the physical food. The latter only supports and proves the importance of the former. He worked the physical sign of feeding them to consolidate their faith in him and in the words he had spoken to them. “Then he ordered them to get all the people together in groups on the green grass, and they sat down on the ground in squares of hundreds and fifties. Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, raised his eyes to heaven, and said the blessing; then he broke the loaves and handed them to his disciples to distribute among the people. He also shared out the two fish among them all. They all ate as much as they wanted.” The providence of God is more than we can ever imagine; if only we pay attention to the presence of his Son among us.

Let us pray: O God, whose Only Begotten Son has appeared in our flesh, grant, we pray, that we may be inwardly transformed through him whom we recognize as outwardly like ourselves. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.