“Love!”
By Father Frank Hernandez
A simple word, but a complicated word to express and live. Love is an attrition or affection towards another person. All of us know and have experienced this feeling, with a loved one; spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, a crush and in the family; love between parents to children and brothers and sisters and other members of the family. And we also know that love is complicated, it is a strong emotion that causes us to act in way we do not expect some times. We all know love, but do we know and understand the Lord of God in our lives?
To help us understand the love of the Lord for humanity we have a reading from the 1st letter of John that says: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love (1 Jn 4: 7-8).” This is the most famous passage of love in our relationship to God. How are we living and experiencing this love in our lives? This is a complicated question for us to answer, but we are still able to give a response. It is difficult to love the Lord because we do not have a physical representation of the Lord that is easy to connect too. Example, our family, we can easily see them, hear their voice and give them hugs; that physical contact helps in that relationship of love with them. But with the Lord we cannot do that easy, so how do we develop that relationship of love with Him. We develop that by have an active prayer life with Him, attending services on Sundays or whenever we gather as a community of faith and finally, living His example in our daily lives.
To have a personal relationship with the Lord and to feel His love takes time. We need to make time during our day to pray and speak to the Lord in our hearts, but also to let the Lord have the space and time to speak back to us. To feel His love through our prayers and listening and understand His words in sacred scripture, the bible. To feel the love from the Letter of John take time, effort, work and concentration. To want goes love is not easy. It is not like a light switch that we just turn on and off, it is a feeling and a relationship. How can we make time to feel this love more in our life from the Lord? He wants a relationship with us, we need to make the time for Him.
As we enter the month of February, the month of Love, how can we improve that relationship with the Lord and develop that love in our own lives more. “For God is Love,” how can that love help us to become a better person and a better disciple to the Lord?