IN our relation with others, it’s
important that we know
how to treat each one personally as he is and also as he ought to be.
This is a basic demand of charity.
This will involve some tension, of course, since we have
to accept everyone as he is yet also knowing what needs in him to be
improved, purified, corrected, etc. But we would know how to deal with
that tension if we simply follow God’s commandments.
And what are these commandments? Mainly two: loving God
with all our might and strength, and loving others as ourselves. The
former would give us the objective criteria of loving, and the latter
applies the first to all of us.
Both commandments will obviously entail a lifetime
process, with stages of development, with ups and downs, wins and
losses that we need to handle properly. The important thing to
remember is that whatever the situation, we should just move on,
always relying on God’s grace, his wisdom and power, as well as our
unremitting efforts.
But loving God should be the first thing to be done, since
he is the source of everything, of whatever is true, good, fair,
beautiful and proper to us. When we love God first, we would get a
good idea also of how much God loves us. And this is the love that we
have to show and give to the others.
When we get a good idea of how and how much God love us,
then we would have a good picture also of how to love ourselves as we
are and as we ought to be. Let’s remember that our duty to love others
should reflect the way we love ourselves, which in turn should be
based on God’s love for us.
It would be a love that is full of patience, hope, mercy
and compassion. It would be a love dripping with affection and
understanding, and ever willing to make sacrifices for the others,
even to the point of martyrdom. It would be a love that would know how
to deal with everyone as he or she is, warts and all, and yet always
concerned with leading him or her to what, how and where he ought to
be.
In the end, it would be a love that aspires to bring
everyone, first ourselves and then everybody else, to attain the
fullness of his or her dignity, making everyone a true image and
likeness of God, a true child of God, with his or her personhood fully
developed and lived.
It would be a love that would move one toward a full
communion of himself with God and with everybody else, a communion
based on God’s love. It is a very dynamic kind of love that would
never say enough in its efforts to pursue its ultimate goal.
This kind of love is fully shown to us by Christ who loved
us all the way to the cross. The ultimate expression of love has been
done by Christ who himself said: “Greater love than this no man has,
that a man lays down his life for his friends.” (Jn 15,13)
This kind of love can only be achieved if one is also
vitally identified with Christ. It simply cannot be done using one’s
own powers alone. Our faculties and powers need the ultimate and
indispensable fuel of God. They just cannot be run by our own will
power, much less, by the dynamics of our natural and worldly forces.
For this kind of love to develop in us, we need to pray,
meditate on the life of Christ who is the pattern of divine love, and
have constant recourse to the Holy Spirit who is the very power that
makes this love alive and burning in us.
Obviously, we need to familiarize ourselves with the
details of that love as articulated by the doctrine of our faith that
in turn is taught authoritatively by the Church. And so, we need to
have a kind of on-going formation, since the content of our faith is
inexhaustible as it is a living faith, ever renewed and updated and
yet remaining faithful to an absolute, unchanging core.
We have to be wary of simply relying on a love based on
sentimentalism alone, and worse, on some ideologies that do not
capture, nay, that distort the true nature and essence of man, of
love, and human sexuality.
At the moment, we are confronted with what the Pope refers
to as “ideological colonization,” for example, the gender ideology
that is behind the same-sex unions. We have to be prepared to clarify
this twisted issue.
how to treat each one personally as he is and also as he ought to be.
This is a basic demand of charity.
This will involve some tension, of course, since we have
to accept everyone as he is yet also knowing what needs in him to be
improved, purified, corrected, etc. But we would know how to deal with
that tension if we simply follow God’s commandments.
And what are these commandments? Mainly two: loving God
with all our might and strength, and loving others as ourselves. The
former would give us the objective criteria of loving, and the latter
applies the first to all of us.
Both commandments will obviously entail a lifetime
process, with stages of development, with ups and downs, wins and
losses that we need to handle properly. The important thing to
remember is that whatever the situation, we should just move on,
always relying on God’s grace, his wisdom and power, as well as our
unremitting efforts.
But loving God should be the first thing to be done, since
he is the source of everything, of whatever is true, good, fair,
beautiful and proper to us. When we love God first, we would get a
good idea also of how much God loves us. And this is the love that we
have to show and give to the others.
When we get a good idea of how and how much God love us,
then we would have a good picture also of how to love ourselves as we
are and as we ought to be. Let’s remember that our duty to love others
should reflect the way we love ourselves, which in turn should be
based on God’s love for us.
It would be a love that is full of patience, hope, mercy
and compassion. It would be a love dripping with affection and
understanding, and ever willing to make sacrifices for the others,
even to the point of martyrdom. It would be a love that would know how
to deal with everyone as he or she is, warts and all, and yet always
concerned with leading him or her to what, how and where he ought to
be.
In the end, it would be a love that aspires to bring
everyone, first ourselves and then everybody else, to attain the
fullness of his or her dignity, making everyone a true image and
likeness of God, a true child of God, with his or her personhood fully
developed and lived.
It would be a love that would move one toward a full
communion of himself with God and with everybody else, a communion
based on God’s love. It is a very dynamic kind of love that would
never say enough in its efforts to pursue its ultimate goal.
This kind of love is fully shown to us by Christ who loved
us all the way to the cross. The ultimate expression of love has been
done by Christ who himself said: “Greater love than this no man has,
that a man lays down his life for his friends.” (Jn 15,13)
This kind of love can only be achieved if one is also
vitally identified with Christ. It simply cannot be done using one’s
own powers alone. Our faculties and powers need the ultimate and
indispensable fuel of God. They just cannot be run by our own will
power, much less, by the dynamics of our natural and worldly forces.
For this kind of love to develop in us, we need to pray,
meditate on the life of Christ who is the pattern of divine love, and
have constant recourse to the Holy Spirit who is the very power that
makes this love alive and burning in us.
Obviously, we need to familiarize ourselves with the
details of that love as articulated by the doctrine of our faith that
in turn is taught authoritatively by the Church. And so, we need to
have a kind of on-going formation, since the content of our faith is
inexhaustible as it is a living faith, ever renewed and updated and
yet remaining faithful to an absolute, unchanging core.
We have to be wary of simply relying on a love based on
sentimentalism alone, and worse, on some ideologies that do not
capture, nay, that distort the true nature and essence of man, of
love, and human sexuality.
At the moment, we are confronted with what the Pope refers
to as “ideological colonization,” for example, the gender ideology
that is behind the same-sex unions. We have to be prepared to clarify
this twisted issue.
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