LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #14

Love: a Lord centered life

Thursday, Second week in Lent - 16th March, 2017

Jer 17: 5-10; Lk 16: 19-31

Blessed is the one who puts one's trust in the Lord! The Word today invites us to understand an important fact regarding a life of love. Let us reflect on it in three steps.

One. Achieving a loving way of life cannot be done by a self centered way of life. Me, myself and mine can never allow me to think of the others and of their good. What matters to me would be the absolute for me: my career, my personal wishes and desires, my personal dreams etc.! The one who lives his life just at my doorstep would matter nothing to me for it is never within my perspective.

Two. Not even the other centered life would lead me to true love, because it would make me belittle myself or make myself a slave to the other. My values would be warped and influenced greatly by the goodness or the wiles of the other. I would relativise everything because of the other and I would have no absolute reference point to guide myself. Would that make my life truly loving, guess it won't.

Three. The right way to grow in a truly loving way of life, is to live a Lord-centered life. When I let the Lord have the central place in my life, I would see that everything else falls in place. The Lord is love and a Lord centered life would be love centered life. The Lord shall be the absolute reference point and nothing would be relativised. 

It is a Lord centered life that would help me grow in a loving way of life and curiously the other way around is not so certain. Let us check if we are engaged in a Lord centered life; love would find its place without much difficulty.

LOVE-LENT 2017 - THE WORD IN LENT #13

To love is to suffer; as the Lord suffers

Wednesday, Second week in Lent - 15th March, 2017

Jer 18: 18-20; Mt 20: 17-28

Jeremiah has a very serious cause to present before the Lord - the Lord called him to make him the light of the nations, the prophet to God's people. But Jeremiah finds that he has become not only a laughing stock but even a person who is looked at with apathy. They were plotting against him. Is this becoming the light of the nations and prophet to the people? 

The Lord says, yes it is. To be truly God's servant and to live for God's people is to suffer! Jesus experiences the same. I am reminded of what the mother of St. John Bosco told him, when he finally became a priest after all hardships - she said, 'to begin to celebrate mass is to begin to suffer' -why so? We have the answer in the readings today and in the lives of all God's servants. God is love and God's love is always put to test with the hard heartedness of the people. When God suffers, will not servants of God suffer?

To truly love is to suffer - because it entails looking for nothing in return, having no demands on the one whom we love and continuing to love with the good of the other in mind. This is what Jesus did, while we constantly look for our remunerations, affirmations, recognition and recompense. The challenge is to grow up and love, 'love until it hurts' as Mother Teresa says.