Love... do we understand it at all?
Thursday, 9th week in Ordinary Time
Tb 6:10-11; 7:1bcde, 9-17; 8:4-9a; Mk 12: 28-34
Two unfortunate sharings I heard recently: one about a husband who decided to disown his wife an year after their wedding, because she was diagnosed with a serious illness; the second a religious who said she had not spoken for the past four years with another sister living with her in the same convent. These two and many such experiences raise a fundamental doubt: are we truly Christian? Have we really immersed ourselves into the mystery that God is? God is love and if we are born of God we should love.
While the Gospel reiterates this call that each of us has received, in the first reading today we have a typical example in the person of Tobiah. Once he decides that he loves Sarah, nothing deters him from growing in that perfection. He is told how fatal it can be if he loves Sarah, but he does not hesitate. The reason is, he believed that Sarah was brought into his life by God.
Love is not merely a feeling; it is an act of faith. To look at every person around me and see and believe that God has given me that person, that brother or that sister, to love- that is the secret. That is true Christian love: does the world today, does every Christian today, do I today, really understand it at all?