Love requires sacrifice

WE have to be clear about this. Love will always require

sacrifice. Where there is no sacrifice, there cannot be love. Love

grows only to the extent that we are willing to make sacrifices.

Without sacrifice, we sooner or later will be swallowed up by our own

egoism, our own selfishness.

  

            And this selfishness can take the form of laziness,

attachment to certain things to the point of self-absorption, etc. We

have to be ready to do battle against these anomalous tendencies of

ours.

  

            We should always remember that the very essence of love is

self-giving. In love, the lover needs to lose himself in his beloved.

He has to be identified with his beloved. And this will always involve

self-denial.

  

            The self-giving and losing that love requires would

actually enrich the person in his dignity. This way of loving conforms

to what Christ himself said: “Whoever would save his life will lose

it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 16,25)

  

            That’s why Christ himself said that if anyone wants to

follow him, that person has to deny himself and, in fact, should carry

the cross also. Otherwise, he cannot love. And true love is

personified in Christ himself.

  

            In other words, we can only love truly when we identify

ourselves with Christ who precisely commanded us to love one another

as he himself has loved us.      We have to understand that only in

Christ would we manage to keep our love alive and vibrant, always

fresh, new and creative. It’s a love that is open to anything, and

willing to go through all the challenges, trials, difficulties, etc.

  

            To be sure, Christ is not sparing in inspiring us with his

love and in sharing his love with us. If we bother to be open

ourselves to him, to love the way Christ has loved us should not be a

problem. Christ makes himself and his ways of loving readily available

to us. That is why we need to actively look for him, as he himself

told us. “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find…”

(Mt 7,7)

  

            We need to see to it that everyday we pattern our love

after Christ’s love for us that is so full of sacrifice that it went

to the extent of offering his life for us. We can do this if everyday,

we would always look for opportunities to makes sacrifices by ways of

serving others the way they need to be served, unafraid of the

inconveniences involved.

  

            We should never forget to deny ourselves in something

everyday if we want to keep our love alive. That self-denial should be

inspired by Christ’s example. It should not be done simply for its own

sake, for the sake only of self-denial. That would dehumanize us. This

distinction between a Christ-inspired self-denial and a self-denial

that is only for its own sake is important.

   

            When we find something required by love hard to do, all we

need to do is to go to Christ, asking for his help, for his grace.

Thus, difficulties should be understood as an invitation to go to

Christ, not to ignore him and spend our time brooding uselessly.

  

            It would greatly help if we meditate on the very passion

and death of Christ so that we can appreciate the necessity of

sacrifice in loving. There Christ shows us how to love by suffering in

obedience to his Father’s will. There we will find the true meaning of

suffering and sacrifice and their intimate relation to love.