A crash course on Love: Lesson #2

WORD 2day: Wednesday after Epiphany

Jan 8, 2020: 1 John 4: 7-10; Mark 6: 34-44

Love is a concrete Life style - love is not just a feeling; it is not just a sentiment. 

Love is a decision; a commitment; a life-style. It is a life style because we are loved into existence; our very origin is love. God loved us first and we are therefore expected to love; if we do not love, we do not understand our own nature! And no one can call oneself, spiritual, faithful, holy, religious, or pious, if he or she does not love his or her brother or sister. 

Faith, Hope and Love, these three remain; "but the greatest of these is Love" (1 Cor 13:13), because God is love (1 Jn 4:8). And this love has to be seen in the concrete day to day choices... the choice of words, of actions and of priorities. As we reflected yesterday, love is giving of oneself without expecting, and this self-giving has to be seen in concrete action, not in just a wishful desire or an utopian dream. Love is the power of being children of God; Love is taking the side of the needy and the suffering, the last and the least, the exploited and the desperate. When we make that concrete choice in or way of life, there will always be means to do even the impossible, as we see Jesus in the Gospel today - feeding the crowd with just nothing in hand. 

Love is a concrete life style that makes present God, here and now, for all, especially those who need the most!

A crash-course on Love: Lesson #1

WORD 2day: Tuesday after Epiphany

Jan 7, 2020: 1 John 3:22 - 4:6; Matthew 4: 12-17, 23-25

Just done with the intense Christmas mood with the Epiphany just past, the Word offers us a crash course on love, beginning today, to set the tone for the New year at our disposal. 

Lesson #1: LOVE is giving, a giving of oneself, a giving of oneself to the other without any calculations of gain or profit. 

The first reading reminds us of the fact that God gave everything even God's only Son... because God is Love! The Son gave everything even his divinity, because he was Love personified! Jesus was filled with compassion for the people and He reached out to each of them in love, in boundless and unconditional love. The Holy Spirit lives on within us, because the Spirit is the mark of God's love for God's children. 

Let's be ready to GIVE, not just from what we have but from what we are...to those around us...beginning with the family, the brothers and sisters who live with us, on a daily basis. Let us learn to give without anyone asking, let us learn to give without calculating, without looking for returns, without asking whether the other merits or not... that is the Love that comes from God!