Love

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B (4 November 2018)

Deuteronomy 6:2-6

Hebrews 7:23-28

Mark 12:28-34

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.”

Love is the only commandment. Love is the only law. This is the only thing that our Lord asks from us: to love. Nothing but love. To make things clear: Jesus' commandment isn't, “You shall be right,” but “You shall love one another.” Our obsession with being doctrinally correct, theologically right, dogmatically sound, etc., have shifted our focus from love to many other marginal elements in religion. Religion is about giving our self to God and to our neighbour at the same time in love. If we don’t focus on love, then we can easily separate religion from life.

Love of God is completely interwoven with love of our neighbour. You cannot separate one love from the other. Otherwise it is not true love. True love includes everything, everyone. In other words, we are not called to love God or the world. Rather, we are called to love God in the world. We love God by loving the world. We love God through and with the world. We cannot love God unless we love the world.

But, what is love? Love is all about relationship. Truest relationship is love. A truly loving person is one who keeps and maintains all her relationships at all costs. On the other end of the spectrum, are people who are toxic, psychopathic, or sociopathic, those who cannot maintain relationships, who cannot sustain relationships. They run from them. Usually, either they are loners or they make all relating with them very difficult. So love is about connecting our self with all that is around us, it is about including as many persons and beings as possible inside our consciousness. To exclude anything that appears in our universe is not love. Love joins everything.

The Mystery of God is a mystery of love and relationship, the only perfect model of love for us. Whatever is going on in God is a flow, a radical relatedness, a perfect communion between Three. If God is relationship, we too are relationships. Therefore, love is not what we do, but it is what we are. It is our deepest vocation. It is our True Self. Love is where we came from and love is where we are going. It's not something we can buy or earn or merit. It's not something we can attain. It is the presence of God within us. Even the physical structure of this universe is love.

If you wish, take a few moments to realise this love using your breath as prayer. As you inhale, listen to God’s silent “I love you” in which His sustaining love is pouring itself out and giving itself to you as the gift and miracle of your very life. As you exhale, whisper a “I love you” to God, who makes this miracle of life possible. If you are sad at this moment, listen to God’s “I love you” in this sadness as you inhale; and respond to Him with a “I love you” in that same sadness. So too you could do with bodily pain, with feelings of fear and confusion, of loneliness or quiet joy and amazement that may rise and fall within you as you sit in prayer. Everything is filled with love.

Realise the gift and miracle of your very life, of your very self. This is love.