I think about love all the time for it's the only thing worth thinking about in life. One might even say I am obsessed with it for it is my ethos in life.
So what is it about love that is so compelling? The simple truth is I am made for love - as is every other person on this planet - and therefore it is part of who I am, as I live and breathe.
Seeing as love is essential for my well-being I've spent years trying to get it right. And with the help of my Christian heritage, that I have fully embraced only in recent years, I am in a good 'lurve' place.
It hasn't been easy to find the balance and I've made quite a few wrong turns and taken a number of painful tumbles, but I have finally found the secret. It lies with one person: Jesus Christ.
By choosing to love as He did, in a selfless manner, I have found fulfilment and a deep joy that has set me free from desperate bids for love that portend only heartache and enslavement.
Instead Christ has led me to look for, and find love in all the right places.
In Deus Caritas Est, God is Love, Pope Benedict XVI proposes that love takes on a "multiplicity of meanings" that is much more than love between man and woman, so often thought of as the "epitome of love" and sought so avidly and single-mindedly by most people.
Love has an infinite number of flavours and textures but if we insist on hankering after one particular incarnation of love, nuptial in nature, then we have impoverished our life immensely and limited our capacity to savour the voluptuous, soul-satisfying and diverse fruits of love.
The Pope goes on to say it is when "body and soul are intimately united", we are able to attain "full stature" and eros from undisciplined intoxication its "true grandeur". Love becomes an experience beyond a physical high.
"Love is indeed “ecstasy”, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God."
These words of Pope Ben resonate within me for my own journey has take on such an outward looking, Biblical turn of loving God and others. This perfect marriage of eros and agape.
The conscious decision to give of my self that is not merely about self-sacrifice or cheerless deprivation but about doing and being all the things that make me feel good about myself and all the things I would wish on myself from others but do not demand from them.
It is an exodus from ego-centricity to happiness, inner peace and self-transcendence made possible only through attempts to be more and more like Christ.
Why? Because I love the way He loves me and I want to share this incredibly precious love I have found with Him with the rest of the world.
Love has become my enabler, to make my existence a rich and exciting one.
Every day affords me opportunities to make a difference, not just within my immediate circle, but beyond. To enlarge my world to include those who are the "least of my brethren".
The call to respond is unceasing for poverty, suffering and injustice are ugly realities of life. If I believe in the equal dignity of all humanity, then I must act accordingly to address whatever I see wrong in the world.
For the Church, diakonia or the ministry of charity "is part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being" according to Pope Benedict.
Therefore, as a member of Church, "God's family in the world", I have an imperative to ensure no one "goes without the necessities of life", necessities I have in abundance, be it financial stability or emotional well-being.
Whatever I have received that is good and beautiful, I must pay it forward if I am to be true to myself and to honour my Father who created me.
Last Friday evening, A. spoke about "the call within the call" - what has God specifically called each of us to be and to do, that goes beyond a surface understanding of vocation and touches on developing a personal spirituality.
Answering the call within the call is responding in love to God to love others in a way that is unique to who I am. It involves cultivating an interior openness and humility, and lots of prayer.
These dispositions, Pope Benedict also stresses, are vital when reaching out to others with a helping hand.
And so, as I continue to make sense of how I am to love in the world - to misquote Descartes: I love, therefore I am - I hearken to the Catholic Church's social teachings as the consummate guide.
I'd like to end with this beautiful invitation to love from the Pope's first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est:
"Faith, hope and charity go together. Hope is practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.
"Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately triumphs in glory.
"Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love.
"Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working.
"Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God. To experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world."
So what is it about love that is so compelling? The simple truth is I am made for love - as is every other person on this planet - and therefore it is part of who I am, as I live and breathe.
Seeing as love is essential for my well-being I've spent years trying to get it right. And with the help of my Christian heritage, that I have fully embraced only in recent years, I am in a good 'lurve' place.
It hasn't been easy to find the balance and I've made quite a few wrong turns and taken a number of painful tumbles, but I have finally found the secret. It lies with one person: Jesus Christ.
By choosing to love as He did, in a selfless manner, I have found fulfilment and a deep joy that has set me free from desperate bids for love that portend only heartache and enslavement.
Instead Christ has led me to look for, and find love in all the right places.
In Deus Caritas Est, God is Love, Pope Benedict XVI proposes that love takes on a "multiplicity of meanings" that is much more than love between man and woman, so often thought of as the "epitome of love" and sought so avidly and single-mindedly by most people.
Love has an infinite number of flavours and textures but if we insist on hankering after one particular incarnation of love, nuptial in nature, then we have impoverished our life immensely and limited our capacity to savour the voluptuous, soul-satisfying and diverse fruits of love.
The Pope goes on to say it is when "body and soul are intimately united", we are able to attain "full stature" and eros from undisciplined intoxication its "true grandeur". Love becomes an experience beyond a physical high.
"Love is indeed “ecstasy”, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God."
These words of Pope Ben resonate within me for my own journey has take on such an outward looking, Biblical turn of loving God and others. This perfect marriage of eros and agape.
The conscious decision to give of my self that is not merely about self-sacrifice or cheerless deprivation but about doing and being all the things that make me feel good about myself and all the things I would wish on myself from others but do not demand from them.
It is an exodus from ego-centricity to happiness, inner peace and self-transcendence made possible only through attempts to be more and more like Christ.
Why? Because I love the way He loves me and I want to share this incredibly precious love I have found with Him with the rest of the world.
Love has become my enabler, to make my existence a rich and exciting one.
Every day affords me opportunities to make a difference, not just within my immediate circle, but beyond. To enlarge my world to include those who are the "least of my brethren".
The call to respond is unceasing for poverty, suffering and injustice are ugly realities of life. If I believe in the equal dignity of all humanity, then I must act accordingly to address whatever I see wrong in the world.
For the Church, diakonia or the ministry of charity "is part of her nature, an indispensable expression of her very being" according to Pope Benedict.
Therefore, as a member of Church, "God's family in the world", I have an imperative to ensure no one "goes without the necessities of life", necessities I have in abundance, be it financial stability or emotional well-being.
Whatever I have received that is good and beautiful, I must pay it forward if I am to be true to myself and to honour my Father who created me.
Last Friday evening, A. spoke about "the call within the call" - what has God specifically called each of us to be and to do, that goes beyond a surface understanding of vocation and touches on developing a personal spirituality.
Answering the call within the call is responding in love to God to love others in a way that is unique to who I am. It involves cultivating an interior openness and humility, and lots of prayer.
These dispositions, Pope Benedict also stresses, are vital when reaching out to others with a helping hand.
And so, as I continue to make sense of how I am to love in the world - to misquote Descartes: I love, therefore I am - I hearken to the Catholic Church's social teachings as the consummate guide.
I'd like to end with this beautiful invitation to love from the Pope's first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est:
"Faith, hope and charity go together. Hope is practised through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good even in the face of apparent failure, and through the virtue of humility, which accepts God's mystery and trusts him even at times of darkness.
"Faith tells us that God has given his Son for our sakes and gives us the victorious certainty that it is really true: God is love! It thus transforms our impatience and our doubts into the sure hope that God holds the world in his hands and that, as the dramatic imagery of the end of the Book of Revelation points out, in spite of all darkness he ultimately triumphs in glory.
"Faith, which sees the love of God revealed in the pierced heart of Jesus on the Cross, gives rise to love.
"Love is the light—and in the end, the only light—that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage needed to keep living and working.
"Love is possible, and we are able to practise it because we are created in the image of God. To experience love and in this way to cause the light of God to enter into the world."
No comments:
Post a Comment