DO WE REALLY KNOW WHAT LOVE IS? - 7/10/22 (Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Luke 10:27

"You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself."

For the full readings, click here: 

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071022.cfm

For the examination of conscience and guide to confession, click here:

https://mycatholic.life/catholic-prayers/examination-of-conscience/

Blessed Sunday! God wants us to have eternal life. This is why Jesus came to us and offered Himself as a sacrifice on the cross. But, how can we receive this gift from God? This is the question of the scholar of the law, and this is the same question we all have. As mentioned by the scholar, it's the commandment to love God and to love our neighbors. Sometimes, it's easy for us to say that love is the solution to the problems in our world, and that's right. However, we may not be aware of how we can truly love. When others say they love God, what they mean may be that they give a little bit of their time in their prayer. Loving our neighbors may simply being nice to many people. Although these are not bad, our Lord desires for us to have a more radical understanding of love.

The greatest commandment is not merely to love God by a little bit of our effort, time and attention. Rather, we should love God will all our heart, with all our being, with all our mind and with all our strength. This does not mean that we should make vocal prayers every second because that is humanly impossible. But, this means that everything we do in our life should be done out of love for God. The greatest commandment leads us to do the greatest virtue, love. Love is the queen of all virtues. Everything that we do, even if it's the smallest thing, if done with love, is truly pleasing to our Lord. God is not a demanding Being as if He will only wait for us to love Him to the fullness of our being before He gives us eternal life. God loves us before we can even love Him. 

But, we receive the eternal life if we accept the relationship that He offers to us. God is love. He is the One who loves us with all His heart, with all His being, with all His strength and with all His mind. This is more manifested in the passion and sacrifice of Jesus. He pours His infinite mercy on us and withhold nothing back. The greatest way we can express our gratefulness for His love is by repaying Him with love where everything we do is done for His greater glory and honor. Due to our sins, especially during the times we neglected God, we may not have the desire to enter into union with God and His eternal life. This is why we should allow ourselves to be filled by the love of God. 

A loving person desires to know the other person even more. We can do the same with God especially through our prayers. There are times when we just spend our time on worldly things, but God, in His mercy, is always giving us opportunities to pray. May we take this opportunity to deepen our love for Christ, especially by reflecting on the Gospel and the Scriptures. By praying with the Word of God, He will enlighten us to the importance of eternal life, and we will be reminded of His mercy. We will recognize that we are sinners. But, instead of falling to despair or discouragement, we will rejoice because we have a Savior who loves us infinitely and is patient with us despite our weaknesses. 

Since we are filled with the love of God, we will desire nothing except to always love Him. We will be transformed in such a way that our goal is to always glorify and honor Him in everything we do instead of gaining as many worldly riches, achievements, honors as possible. This is due to our knowledge that all that matters at the end is to be united with God forever. Even if we do not get what we wanted before, this does not matter because we have a Merciful Savior, and He is more than enough for us. By His grace, we will be faithful to His commandments and the teachings of the Church because we desire to be obedient to His will. And, we will love God so much God will love our neighbors through us. We will b at peace forgiving many people and being patient with them. Our money will be spent for God's glory such as by helping the poor and the needy. The way of Christ is the way of love. This is love. 

Amen +

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, be with us always until the hour of our death. Amen. +

 

May the Lord + bless us, protect us from all evil and bring us to everlasting life. Amen. +  

Reflection by: Dominic