The zeal of love

WE have to make sure that we are always burning with the zeal of love. We have the danger to fall easily into complacency, lukewarmness, mediocrity. We should always be on the lookout for these perils.

            We need to fill our mind and heart with love, and all that love brings—goodness, patience, understanding and compassion, mercy, gratuitous acts of service, generosity and magnanimity.

            Yes, there’s effort involved here. Great, tremendous effort, in fact. But all this stands first of all on the terra firma that is God’s grace, which is always given to us in abundance if we care to ask and receive it. Nothing human, no matter how well done, would prosper unless it is infused also with God’s grace.

            We have to be wary of conforming ourselves, whether openly or subtly, intentionally or mindlessly, to worldly ways, to mere social trends, or to some inertia generated merely physically, hormonally, economically, politically, culturally, historically, etc.

            We need to be most aware and sensitive to these dangers which are so common as to be part of what we call normal in life. Let’s train ourselves to smell out their symptoms and their approaches as soon as they arise. And then be quick to resist them.

            The zeal of love should always come out fresh from the heart, fresh from its real and ultimate source who is God. It’s always new, original, virginal, creative and productive. Love, if it is real, can never grow old and stale, it cannot be just a copycat. It likes to renew itself perpetually, without getting tired.

            It always likes to be better, to do and give oneself more. Its motto can very well be captured in the message of an old song that says today should always be better than yesterday, and tomorrow better than today.

            And even if that love is meant to be shown, shared and given to everyone, it cannot be promiscuous. It’s always pure, wholehearted and faithful to the end, not divided, fractured, inconstant and fleeting. This is the magic of love which can come about only when it springs from the love of God.

            This is the love vividly described once by St. Paul in the following words: “Charity (love) is patient, kind, it envies not, deals not perversely, is not puffed up, is not ambitious, seeks not her own, is not provoked to anger, thinks no evil, rejoices not in iniquity but rejoices with the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Cor 13,4-7)

            We should disabuse ourselves from the thought that this kind of love is inhuman, is impractical and impracticable, is not realistic or is up in the clouds, abstract, disconnected from the realities on the ground, or otherwise, that it is fanatical or triumphalistic.

            Though these fears can have basis when the love one has is not the real one, the truth is that when love is real, that is, that it is the one that comes from God, it cannot but be the most human thing to have and to do, the most practical and realistic, always attentive to the real and objective, not the false and subjective needs of men.

            It is this kind of love that would drive us to know people and things deeply and comprehensively. It does not get stuck with our biases, preferences and our human capabilities. Rather it transcends them, even at the cost of great sacrifices.

            It does not shy away from challenges and difficulties no matter how big or impossible they are. That’s because it is not only human love, but also divine love, since it is infused with the omnipotence of God with whom nothing is impossible.

            That love would lead us to know others thoroughly. It’s not contented with knowing others superficially, casually, inconstantly. It keeps us to know others ever more deeply, going into concrete and specific conditions of the people. It will never say enough.

            That love would also lead us to deal with others properly, loving them all the way to showing them details of affection and understanding, quick to forgive, to find excuses rather than finding faults, to find reasons and impulses to reconcile and unite rather than to remain indifferent because of our unavoidable differences, etc.

            Finesse, refinement and extreme delicacy are not only optional in a love like this. They are the necessary packaging, without which that love is not complete and consummated.

            Love prevents us from getting tired, and though we die one day, it prepares and launches us to eternal life.