Loving in its purest state

WE have to make sure that our pursuit for love goes all the way to its purest state. We have to be wary when we get entangled along the way, getting contented only with some relatively good thing, since our goal is to reach the absolute good who is God.

“Deus caritas est,” St. John describes the essence of God. “God is love.” We cannot and should not settle for anything less. To aim at this love, we are given some guidelines—the Ten Commandments which spell out God’s designs for us. They dispose us to love.

But our Lord, Jesus Christ, spells out these Ten Commandments further by telling us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our might, etc., and the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor. He therefore tells us that loving God goes always with loving our neighbor. Both loves cannot be separated.

He reinforced this teaching by giving us what he termed as the “new commandment,” and that is, that we should love one another as he himself has loved us. Christ, therefore, makes himself the standard of our loving.

More than that, Christ actually makes himself the very power that would enable us to love God and others properly. That’s why he once said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” In short, we cannot love properly unless we are with Christ.

An immediate practical corollary would be that we should at least be in constant touch with Christ. At least we have to look for him, see his example, be familiar with his teaching, enter into a living relationship with him, for we are told by our faith that Christ is alive. He is no mere historical figure.

In fact, he tells us through his apostles, “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” (Mt 28,20) These words should be deeply ingrained in our consciousness, so we can act and live according to this truth.

And what can we learn from him? How has he loved us? Of course, many, even infinite lessons. But we can cite a few.

He adapted himself to our lowly, base and wounded nature. He forgives us all the way, from the bottom of his heart and always. He took to himself the burden of the consequences of our own sins, again all the way to death, and death on the cross.

From these considerations alone, we can learn that we need to think always of the others, because thinking of them is also thinking and loving God himself. Let’s remember that Christ only had one purpose for coming to us—and that is to save us according to the will of his Father. His mission with us is in obedience to his Father.

We need to strengthen this attitude of thinking always of the others in ourselves. This attitude will bring us to God, as well as make us forget our own personal miseries which many times really have no objective basis. They are often invented by us, or are self-inflicted, precisely because we tend to think a lot about ourselves instead of the others.

We have to clearly see the connection of how loving the others is also loving God, with the implication that we forget ourselves more. We have to understand that whatever personal needs we have to consider—including our need for comfort, some pleasure, etc.—should be considered always in relation to God and to the others. Otherwise, we poison ourselves, if we just think in terms of our own selves.

And how should we love the others? Well, how does Christ love us? We are told to love without measure. That is the essence of love which Christ exemplified by loving us all the way to the cross. “No one has greater love than he who offers his life for his friend,” he himself says. And that’s quite obvious.

Even if we are still sinful, Christ continues to love us, ever willing to forgive us as often as necessary. We have to be wary of our tendency to base our loving on some reason. We need to love even if we run out of reasons for loving. This is the love in its purest state, the love lived by Christ.

In our daily affairs, let’s see to it that this love is present, and is the motive and driving force of our actions. Again, this is possible only when we are with Christ.