Let’s fill ourselves with God’s love

IF we really want to be in love, let’s fill ourselves
first of all with the source of love who is none other than God. “Deus
caritas est,” God is love, as St. John says, indicating the ultimate
essence of God. And since we are his image and likeness, we cannot be
other than men and women full of love, of God’s love.

            We have to be wary of distorting this fundamental truth
about ourselves by simply generating our own kind of love that will
always be limited, highly conditioned, effective only under what we
consider to be favorable conditions.

            We have to make the effort to feel the love of God for us
which he pours on us abundantly. That’s simply because unless we feel
that love and get moved by it, we cannot manage to love as we ought to
love. Let’s always remember that Christ himself commanded us to love
one another as he himself has loved us. Christ makes himself the
standard and source of our love.

            Otherwise, what may happen is that we may just rely on our
own self-generated kind of love that can only do so much. For example,
our self-generated love would not know how to be patient for long with
trials and sufferings, how to love and be merciful with those who give
us trouble.

            It would be a love ruled by the law of Talion, eye for an
eye, tooth for a tooth. It would be a love marked by self-interest. In
other words, it would not be pure and completely gratuitous. There
would be strings attached to it. Also, it cannot last long. It would
be too dependent on our moods, and other shifting conditionings.

            We cannot give to others what we do not have. We cannot
reap what we have not sown, and what we sow is first of all sown in us
by God himself, who is our Creator, Father and everything to us. He is
the one who gives us the full scope of the love proper to us. Not only
that, he gives us the power to live it abidingly.

            We readily see this law of love working even in our normal
family life. A baby, for example, knows nothing about loving when he
is born. But he is immediately showered with love and affection, and
learns to reciprocate in his own ways, which we often describe as
“cute.”

            What is given to the baby is given back to us, and what he
observes and receives as he grows is also what he shows and shares
with others. That’s why it is very important that the young ones are
always given good example of loving, caring, serving others, etc.
Otherwise, they can become self-centered and selfish.

            Everyday, we should work out this need of filling
ourselves with God’s love, since this does not come to us
automatically. In the first place, we have to contend with our human
and natural limitations that simply cannot cope with the fullness of
God’s love.

            This is not to mention that we are also burdened by the
effects of our sins and weaknesses, the environment of temptations and
other conditionings that would make us not only insensitive and
resistant but also hostile to God’s love.

            That’s why it’s good to cultivate a life of recollection
and contemplation even while in the middle of the world, ever
meditating and relishing on God’s goodness, wisdom, love and mercy.

            That he created us when there was no need for him to do
so, that he endowed us with the best of things such that we become his
image and likeness, that he always forgives us when we fall and is
patient with us in our erratic ways, that he provides us with all our
needs—all these and more should always be in our mind and heart.

            Even if he allows trials, suffering and calamities to come
our way, we should not forget that his love knows what to do with
them. As St. Paul would put it, “Love bears all things, hopes all
things, endures all things…” (1 Cor 13,7)

            How important therefore that our thinking and even our
sensibility is infused with piety, a piety that is supported by a
theological mind, so that we would always be aware of God
never-failing love for us. And not only that, but also that we would
be moved to love God and others in return.

            We should do everything to fill ourselves with God’s love.
On God’s part, he is never sparing in giving us that love to us. It’s
up to us to have it as much as we can!

The sense of the eternal

WE need to develop this sense of the eternal because that
is proper to us. It’s not a luxury, and much less is it an exercise in
fantastic, delusional futility. It is a necessity. Without it, we
would be lost in this great and largely uncharted ocean that our world
is.

            As human persons with a spiritual soul, we are not meant
to live only in time. We just don’t have a temporal, mundane life,
governed only by temporal and worldly values. We are meant for the
eternal life with eternal laws governing it.

            It would be good that we cultivate an abiding sense of the
eternal, for that would give us the whole picture of our life and
would provide us with the ultimate standards of our life by which all
our mundane affairs and concerns ought to be related and assessed.

            We should not be contented with merely human and natural
criteria as we live our life here on earth. No matter how
indispensable they also are, they only have a relative value,
effective only when organically related to the eternal virtues of
faith, hope and charity.

            The standards of efficiency, effectivity, profitability,
etc., are indeed very helpful, but they can only serve us so much.
They still are in need of a more radical motivation and an ultimate
end. It’s the sense of the eternal that would make us most
broad-minded and that goes all the way in satisfying all the
requirements of our dignity.

            These eternal, theological virtues of faith, hope and
charity are what would lead us to our eternal life. They actually are
the initiatives of God, our Creator and Father, whose image and
likeness we all are, and from whom we come and to whom we belong. They
are not our inventions.

            Precisely, as his image and likeness, we are meant to
belong to him in a most intimate way by sharing in his life and
nature. This is made possible through his grace that brings with it
faith, hope and charity and the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit.

            Oh, how important and crucial it is then to know at least
the basic truth about our relation with God so that we would know how
to keep and enliven that relation, ever mindful of our duties and
responsibilities arising from it.

            Unfortunately, this relation, if ever we are still aware
of it, is often taken for granted, or is mainly influenced by elements
of sentimentalism, social and cultural conditionings, and the like. It
is hardly developed according to the terms of the God-given gifts of
faith, hope and charity.

            To be sure, these gifts of faith, hope and charity are
given to us abundantly. In this, God is never sparing. But it is up to
us to get as much of them as we can, and to keep and develop them
properly, without wasting them.

            We can claim this because of the fact that God has sent
his Son to us to save us, to heal and re-create us. And after the Son
has accomplished his mission, God now has sent us the Holy Spirit to
keep alive the redemptive work of the Son-made-man, Jesus Christ.

            With the Holy Spirit, we are given some special gifts and
fruits that would further facilitate the workings of faith, hope and
charity in us. It’s very important that we be keenly aware of this
truth of our faith, so we can do our part of conforming ourselves to
that reality.

            To be sure, we are equipped with enough God-given powers
to properly handle these supernatural gifts God is giving us. Our
intelligence and will, or what are called our spiritual faculties, can
manage with God’s grace to process the content and standards of the
divine, supernatural gifts.

            It is crucial that we learn how to keep our spiritual
faculties properly grounded and oriented. They just should not be
contented with processing purely worldly things, no matter how
reasonable or scientific or artistic they are. They need to enter into
the world of the supernatural faith, hope and charity.

            Thus, we need to learn how to be recollected, how to keep
our senses, our feelings, emotions and passions, our thinking and
activities, always beginning and ending with God, as what we usually
say in our prayers.

            Immersing ourselves in God does not compromise our
immersion in our worldly affairs. What it does is to help us immerse
ourselves in them properly, supernaturalizing them and relating them
to our eternal life with God, our ultimate end!

Burned out?

WE all know that life has more to offer than what we can
manage. There are surprises both of the pleasant and welcome ones as
well as the terribly unwelcome ones. There are heavy pressures and
insoluble predicaments. We have to be ready for these eventualities,
though we also know we cannot be truly ready enough.

            We have to learn to live with this fact of life and
strengthen our conviction, based on our Christian faith, that there’s
such thing as divine providence. God always governs all of his
creation, and in his own mysterious ways directs all things to
himself. If this is part of our bedrock belief, then we would be open,
ready and game with anything in life.

            A great part of his providence is beyond our
understanding. What we know is that it is at once all-wise,
all-powerful, all-just and all-merciful. If we would just be open to
this truth about his providence, I suppose we would be ok even if
along the way we commit all sorts of mistakes and even sins.

            God knows what to do with our blunders. And if they
happen, it’s because at least God knows how to draw good from them.
Everything somehow happens for a purpose in the ever dynamic
providence of God.

            As St. Paul would put, “To them that love God, all things
work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are
called to be saints.” (Rom 8,28) These words of St. Paul should be the
very kernel of the attitude we ought to have toward anything that can
happen in life.

            Of course, such divine providence does not take away our
freedom which we can use unfortunately to go against his will and
ways. In spite of the infinite wisdom and mercy of God in his
providence, we can still manage to go against it.

            Thus, Christ talked about a sin that cannot be
forgiven—the sin against the Holy Spirit, when we “we speak against
the Holy Spirit.” (cfr Mt 12,32). The Holy Spirit is the God who is
sent to us to sanctify us. He is actually always around prompting us
what to think, choose, say and do.

            We have to remember that God completely gives himself to
us. He is not sparing in this. He is now with us in the Holy Spirit.
In a sense, he is all there for the taking. It’s really just up to now
how to take advantage of this reality.

            Thus, we are told that the proper attitude we ought to
have toward the Holy Spirit is that of docility. But for this to take
place, we also have to do our part. We need to learn to pray, to live
always in the presence of God, to develop the virtues, to learn the
doctrine of our faith so that we would know how to deal with the Holy
Spirit, to avail of the sacraments, etc.

            It also helps that humanly speaking, we develop a good
sense of humor, and a practical sense of how to defuse the pressures,
like indulging in some healthy hobbies and sports, or doing some
physical exercises that can lighten the mind and spirit.

            In the end, when things are just beyond us to cope, we
have to learn how to live abandonment in the hands of God who knows
what to do with all of our predicaments. In this, it might be good to
meditate on that scene of the agony of Christ in the garden of
Gethsemane.

            There he prays most earnestly to his Father, and begs him
to let “this cup pass by me.” He already has done a lot to accomplish
his mission of saving us. Still there is one more thing yet to be
done.

            Later on, he kind of rectified himself: “But not my will
but yours be done.” And with that, he proceeded to face his arrest,
passion, crucifixion and death. He gave himself completely to the
cruelty of men and offered his life, only to resurrect on the third
day.

            We have to see in this scene the template of how we are to
behave when faced with insoluble predicaments. We should not be afraid
of the cross in whatever form it takes. When we have done everything
that we could and still the predicaments remain, we just have to face
and embrace it the way Christ did.

            It’s in that spirit that we can expect to rise also
together with Christ. We can actually have as many resurrections as
death-causing problems in our life!