Love... can we ever understand it enough?

WORD 2day: Thursday, 9th week in Ordinary time

June 8, 2023: Tobit 6:10-11; 7:1bcde, 9-17; 8:4-9a; Mark 12: 28-34

There are too many heart wrenching stories we hear these days... not merely those of big accidents and wars, but above all, of persons who do not understand what it means to love! Think of a husband who decides to disown his wife just witin a year after their wedding, because she was diagnosed with a serious illness; or think of a religious or a priest, after years of life in ministry, just throwing away everything for some misunderstanding or similar temporal issues. Not just these, but many such experiences raise a fundamental doubt: how Christ-ian are we? Have we really immersed ourselves into the mystery that God is? God is love and if we are born of God, we should love - love God and love our brothers and sisters.

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 what it means to say, I love? Will the world ever understand that enough?