Am I ready to Love…everyone?

          The question to ponder this week is “Am I ready to love…everyone?”  We began pedaling down the path of love, little by little, but the slope is getting steep and challenging because now we are called to love everyone! Whaaaat? This is a very hard teaching, and it is impossible depending on our own strength and emotions. We started down this path of love with the question:  Do you love like you love Jesus? He told us love is the greatest. We see in Scripture how Jesus loves. We challenged ourselves to see if our love sounds like the love described in 1 Corinthians. We know Jesus is the source of love and we have to let him love us so we can enkindle his love in our hearts and then give it away. The hallmark of Jesus’ kind of love is mercy, willing the good of another, a real self-giving love.  He sets the standard high:

Matthew 22:39 …you shall love your neighbor as yourself. 

Luke 6:32 If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. (those who agree with us, who loves us too, who meet our social standards…)

Matthew 5:44-45 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…

1 John 4:20 If anyone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.

Matthew 25:40 …as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.

St. Faustina: “Be always merciful as I am merciful. Love everyone out of love for me, even your greatest enemies, so that my mercy may be fully reflected in your heart.” Diary of Divine Mercy #1695, Pg. 600

St. Faustina: “…have great love for those who cause you suffering. Do good to those who hate you. It is not always within your power to control your feelings. You will recognize that you have love, if after having experienced annoyance and contradiction, you do not lose your peace, but pray for those who have made you suffer and wish them well…” Diary of Divine Mercy #1628, Pg. 575

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI: (paraphrased) Love of neighbor is possible in the way proclaimed by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or know. This can only take place with an intimate relationship with God, a relationship which has become a communion of wills, even affecting my emotions. I learn to look on the other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Christ. His friend is my friend, I see with the eyes of Jesus. Here is the necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbor If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God. If I fail to heed others my relationship with God will grow dry. It becomes merely “proper”, but loveless. Only my readiness to encounter my neighbor and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbor can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me. Love of God and love of neighbor are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. Live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a “commandment” imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather a freely bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. (1 Cor 15:28). ENCYCLICAL LETTER DEUS CARITAS EST OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF BENEDICT XVI

We are not a people of despair though; we are a people of hope and faith and trust.  We know Jesus accompanies us & strengthens us on this path of life and love!

Matthew 28:20 I am always with you until the end of the age. 

Hebrews 11:6 For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.

Ephesians 3:12 …we have boldness and confidence of access through our faith in Him [Jesus].

Psalms 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble

Isaiah 41:10 fear not, for I am with you, be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you

Psalms 138:3 On the day I called, you answered me, my strength of soul you increased

Isaiah 12:2 I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength…

The good news is Jesus transforms us from within into a better version of ourselves, animated by His grace! We become new, transformed to Love!

 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come

2 Corinthians 12:9 My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in [your] weakness.

St. Faustina:  …when you are obedient, I take away your weakness and replace it with my strength. I am very surprised souls do not want to make that exchange with me.  (Diary of Divine Mercy #381, Pg. 172)

St. Faustina: I am love and mercy itself.  When a soul approaches me with trust, I fill it with an abundance of graces that it cannot contain them within itself but radiates them to other souls. (Diary of Divine Mercy #1074, pg. 404)

We become ready to love by being in a daily relationship with Jesus, getting to know him, his character, his actions, his friends, the way He loves.

Luke 12:37 Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes; truly, I say to you, he will gird himself and have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them.

1 John 4:16-17 So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.  In this is [His] love perfected with[in] us…