After
mass one Sunday a young man said something interesting to me. He
said, ‘Father, I think that at the mass you should be talking about
loving each other and not just talking about things from the bible
which people don’t understand.’ It is an interesting point and I
agreed with him, partly. A few years ago at a wedding a man said
almost the exact same thing to me. He said, ‘You should just
be telling us to be good to each other. There is no need for all
these words from St. Paul to the Corinthians, etc.’ They are both
absolutely right about the need to talk about loving each other,
because that is one of the most important things that Jesus asked us
to do, ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’ ‘Love your
neighbor as yourself.’ That is how Jesus told us that people would recognize us as Christians, by the way we love each other. But there
is another part to it which is easy to forget.
If
we are to love one another, and that is what the Lord God asks us to
do, where are we supposed to get the strength to do that? How are you
supposed to love people who drive you crazy, or who are unjust to
you, or who do you wrong, or steal from you, who have cheated you out
of money, or offended your family? Since they are in the wrong, are
we still expected to love them? Yes we are. ‘Love your enemies,
pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you.’ It
seems to be a lot to ask. In fact, it can seem quite
unrealistic. This is where we have to go back to the Scriptures to
see what God is saying to us, to try and make sense of this. And
Jesus says, the two most important commandments are, first, ‘You
must love the Lord your God above everything else’. Second, ‘You
must love your neighbor as yourself.’ This may not seem very
important, but this is where the answer lies.
What
God is telling us is that if we are rooted in him, if he is at the center, and we become more and more filled with him and with his
love, then and only then will we have the ability to love other
people. We get the strength to love people, especially those we find
more difficult to love, from the love we experience from God. The
more our relationship with him grows, the more this is possible.
Let
me give you one example. There is a woman called Sister Alvera, from
Italy. Several years ago she set up a community to help drug
addicts recover. She believed that what these people were missing
more than anything else in their lives, was the love of God, and that
this was where their problem was really coming from. So she set up a center to help them recover, a place where they could experience the
love of God first hand from other people. They live like a religious
community. They have no TV, no radio and no newspapers. They do a lot
of physical work and they pray a lot together. The interesting thing
is that through this way of life (which is basically a monastic way
of life – prayer and work) hundreds of men have overcome their drug
addiction, but more importantly they have discovered faith,
discovered the love of God for them and begun completely new lives.
Sr. Alvera now has 36 different centers all over the world. They are
known as the Cenacolo community.
There
are hundreds of people like Sr. Alvera and not all religious either.
The Missionaries of Charity, whom Mother Teresa founded, are another.
How do they do this kind of work? It sounds very noble to work with
the poor, but it can be really disgusting and dangerous too. Where do
they get the strength to work with people who can be very difficult
and sometimes ungrateful? The answer is simple. They are completely
rooted in God. Their own personal relationship with God is where they
get the strength and energy.
Our
ability to love one another, to put up with and respect those we
don’t like, or agree with, comes from our relationship with him.
The more we come to know God, the more we can love the people around
us, starting with our own families, our spouse, whoever is closest to
us. As we come to know the Lord more, our ability to love others also
grows. The key is in coming closer to God, nothing else.
How
do we come closer to God? First, through reading his words in the
bible. The Scriptures are like personal love letters to us from God.
They are written for us personally. Also, through receiving Jesus in
the Eucharist. We cannot get any closer to God than that. And also
through repentance of sin, because God asks us to do that. To say
that we don’t have any sins or that we don’t need to repent of
them, is to call God a liar. We are sinners, we continually need to
repent. We also deepen and live our relationship with God through
prayer, which is simply communicating with God.
All
of these things help to bring about conversion of the heart,
rediscovering God, coming closer to him. Only then will we be able to
love the people around us and only then will our society begin to
improve.
‘You
must love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. You must
love your neighbor as yourself.’