Love blooms in the little things

WE don’t have to wait for some special, extraordinary events for love to bloom. Love can sprout and grow strong even in the ordinary, simple things of our day, filling us with all sorts of good things, because that is how we are meant to live our life here on earth.

It can and ought to spring even right now, where we are, with what we are handling, because more than the occasion and the situation, love is a matter of the heart and the will, when they want to correspond to God's will and love at the present moment, however it may be.

We have been created out of love and for love. That’s because we have been created in the image and likeness of God who is love. Our life would be meaningless, would be empty if it does not have love. But we have to make sure that it is the real love, the love of God, and not just any version of love.

The possibility of love breaking out in the ordinary things of our day is always there, since in the first place, God is present everywhere, and he is not present only in a passive way, but rather in most active way—prompting us as to what and how to think, feel, behave or react.

Let us remember that being our Creator and our Father full of love for us, God is the ultimate and constant source of what is good and true for us. We actually cannot be, cannot live, cannot think and behave properly without him.

And God is in us and around us. He is our beginning and end. In everything, he is present and is intervening in our life in ways respectful of our nature and condition. We have to learn how to discern him, and to engage him in a relationship of love. This is the challenge and the duty we have in life.

We have to be wary of our tendency to depend solely on our own estimation of what is good and true for us. We are notorious for relying mainly on our ideas and feelings, and ignoring our faith, which is what connects us with God.

With that precarious situation, we often would find ourselves in states of doubt, fear, anger and irritability, confusion and perplexity. Mysteries, sufferings and other negative events in our life simply cannot be understood by us without faith.

From there, we would become vulnerable to laziness, sadness, or sense of rebellion, pride and vanity, lust and gluttony, and all other anomalies.

We have to live by faith which is maintained and strengthened by the practice of love—love for God and love for the others. This is the formula that is supposed to work for us.

That is why we need to see to it that we are always in love with the proper kind of love. That’s because we also tend to distort this most important principle of our life. Instead of loving God and others, we easily fall for loving our own selves—our comfort, our lust, our money, power, etc.

And we think that love is so special that it has to be reserved for a special moment and with a special person. But that is just not so. Christ himself told us to love everyone, including enemies, and those who appear unlovable to us—the poor, the helpless, the weak, etc.

This is the kind of love that is meant for us. We should fight against any tendency to distort it, and thus, we need to be vigilant always and quick to dispel the impulse to convert love to selfishness.

And the arena for this would the daily duties we have, the little things we meet everyday that comprise most of our life. In fact, this is the real test of love—when it continues to vibrate moment to moment regardless of what we are doing and what we are dealing in.

This is what we have to live and teach and transmit to others. We need to struggle valiantly against a strong, almost invincible world ethos that removes love from its usual and proper context of the little things of everyday.

To many of the young students I meet in school, I usually tell them that they don't have to wait for a pretty girl to fall in love. They have to fall in love in the continuing flow of little duties of the day. Failing in that, they will fail in the other aspects of love.