LOVING IN ORDER TO LIVE IN GOD


THURSDAY AFTER EPIPHANY SUNDAY

1 Jn 4:19-5:4; Ps 72:1-2,14-15,17; MK 4:14-22

To Love is to live in God

The fact that God is love implies that love shares in the mystery of God. It is with steady contemplation of this mystery that we are able to penetrate a bit into what Saint John offers us, which is an inexhaustible fountain. No wonder the Holy Spirit is specifically referred to as the love of the Father and the Son. Love immerses us in a new life. To love is to participate in the Holy Spirit. Since the Spirit is of the Father and the Son, love makes us share in the life of the Father and the Son. Love enables us to live away from our despicable or sinful selves as we know ourselves, and live in God, from where we know and love ourselves properly. We fear losing ourselves in God when we commence the spiritual life of faith and love of God. The love of God becomes more real as we detach from counterfeit love of creatures for selfish ends, which is not worthy of being called love when compared to the love of God. Another wrong or unfounded fear we entertain as beginners in the love of God is the fear of losing the love of creatures or persons. Spouses, especially, fear losing the love of the other because of their devotion or their spouse’s devotion to the love of God. These fears are unfounded; we love creatures, persons, better and purer when we love God more intimately. What disappears in our love for creatures, persons, is the impurity in our love for them.

When the flame of the Holy Spirit burns more in our hearts, our impure love for others and creatures undergoes purification to accommodate a more intimate relationship with God. Saint John, the beloved apostle, explains that our genuine love for others can only come from God. “We are to love, because God loved us first. Anyone who says, ‘I love God’, and hates his brother, is a liar, since a man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God whom he has never seen.” Thus, the true love of our brothers, sisters, spouses, children, etc. can only be with the love we draw or learn from God. If not, what we call love would only be the seeking of ourselves in those we profess to love. God teaches true love by his word and the life of his Son among us. The ability to love genuinely is never from us, but flows from God to us when we profess faith in the incarnation of his Son. By such profession of faith is love gendered in us by the new spirit we receive. We love genuinely only when we are begotten of God. “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been begotten by God; and whoever loves the Father that begot him loves the child whom he begets.” The new birth we receive in the Spirit enables us to love with the love of God.

As children of God, born of our faith in Jesus Christ, we learn to love with the love of God by living through the Holy Spirit of the Son whom we have received. The Incarnation of the Son of God, which we celebrate this time of Christmas, means the Spirit of the Son is now found within our human nature, giving us the ability to love as God loves. The dwelling of the Son among us is our vocation to participate in the mystery of God’s love. Thus, the scriptural passage of Isaiah the Son of Man read in the synagogue was fulfilled both in him and in all who believe in the Incarnation. “The spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour.” All these are works of love of God we are to carry out with the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Since we cannot give what we do not have, our vocation is to experience the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ and thereby learn to love as God. The single commandment of the Christian life is that of love. To fulfil this commandment, the Holy Spirit has been given to us, to be with us always as our paraclete and guide. He reveals the love of Jesus Christ for us and empowers us to love as he loved us.

Let us pray: O God, who through your Son raised up your eternal light for all nations, grant that your people may come to acknowledge the full splendour of their Redeemer, that, bathed ever more in his radiance, they may reach everlasting glory. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

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