The God of Love and Peace

God is Love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit

Jesus, I trust in you!

It is disturbing to know that many acts of terrorism today are done in the name of God. Apparently, terrorists think that if they burn churches and kill unbelievers, they are doing the will of God. But this deception comes from a false notion of who God is. On this Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, the word of God proclaims to us that the one true God is the God of love. On Mt. Sinai, God revealed himself to Moses: “The Lord, the Lord, a merciful God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” This revelation runs contrary to our common perception of a God who is always angry and relentless in his cruelty. St. Paul tells the Corinthians that God is the “God of love and peace” who commands us to “encourage one another, agree with one another, and live in peace.” God does not hate the earth. He does not want it condemned nor destroyed. Instead, “God so loved the world that he gave his Only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

Take note that he does not threaten: “Believe or be killed.” Rather, the peril of death is already present on account of our sin. “This is indeed a stiff-necked people.” Our stubbornness in sin is the real culprit…it is the reason we die. Violence does not come from God. Hatred does not come from God. Terrorism does not come from God. War does not come from God. It comes from sin. Our Lady said at Fatima: “War is a punishment for sins.” Contrary to what pagans believe, there is no god of war. The only true God is the God of love and peace.

God does not want us to perish. He wants us to have eternal life because he loves us. This is why he sent his Son. He did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. God sent his Son to offer us a way out of the condemnation that the world has brought upon itself. All we have to do is to believe in his Son so that we may not be condemned. He who does not believe in Jesus remains in his sins. He remains condemned.

There will be war as long as people do not know the Blessed Trinity. Violence and hatred will remain so long as the world does not know the God of love and peace. The God of love is the Blessed Trinity. “God is Love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” (CCC, 257.) In the inner life of God is a great mystery of communion in love: the Father loves the Son in that Fount of Love who is the Holy Spirit. And this Love is so great and powerful that the Blessed Trinity reveals himself wherever there is love. St. Augustine said: “Where there is love, there is a Trinity: a Lover, a Beloved, and a Fountain of Love.” St. Francis of Assisi used to lament: “Love is not known. Love is not loved.” The world continues to live under the threat of violence because Love is not known and loved. The world will not be at peace until it knows and loves the Blessed Trinity. Therefore, let us make Love known. “Mend your ways, encourage one another, live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you…The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end. Amen.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!  

Communion of will: the Maturity of Love

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

Last Sunday, Jesus told us: “Remain in me as I remain in you.” And we heard that we will remain in him as long as we keep his commandments: “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love.” Today, the Lord Jesus gives us his new commandment: “Love one another as I love you.” The Lord does not simply command us to love one another in any way we would like. He was very specific. It had to follow a pattern: “As I love you.” The pattern of our love for one another is his love for us. What does this mean? It means that even before commanding us to love, he first loved us. He first loved us because God himself is love as St. John said in the 2^nd reading: “Love us of God…God is love.” Pope Benedict said: “In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message is both timely and significant.” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1.) here we find the novelty of Biblical revelation. The Bible reveals to us a new image of God: it is the image of one true God who loves man. God loves us with a personal love. It is comparable to the love of a husband for his wife. This love “is bestowed in a completely gratuitous manner, without any previous merit, but also because it is love which forgives.” (Deus Caritas Est, 10) On account of our “adultery” against God, God’s love goes beyond gratuity. His love is a forgiving love. God’s love “is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice.” (ibid.)  “In Jesus Christ, it is God himself who goes in search of the ‘stray sheep’, a suffering and lost humanity.” (Deus Caritas Est, 12) “His death on the Cross is the culmination of that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form. By contemplating the pierced side of Christ (cf. 19:37), we can understand (what the 2^nd reading told us): “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). It is there that this truth can be contemplated. It is from there that our definition of love must begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move.” “There can be no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

God, who is love, first loved us even in spite of our infidelity against him. “In this is love:  not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son in expiation for our sins.” “Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere ‘command’; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1) “The ‘commandment’ of love is only possible because it is more than a requirement. Love can be ‘commanded’ because it has first been given.” (Deus Caritas Est, 14.) The experience of being loved by God changes us and makes our love mature to the point that we being to love what he loves and to reject what he rejects. Thus, we now learn to look at one another from the perspective of Jesus. “In God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know.” My communion with the will of Jesus affects even my feelings: “I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend.” I begin to look at my neighbors with that loving gaze of Jesus. I desire to lay down my life for my neighbor because he is my friend. And because I am willing to die for this neighbor, I will not deny him even the smallest act of service. How can I be expected to die for my neighbor if I am not even willing to serve him? If I cannot be faithful in little things, how can I be trustworthy of bigger things? Regardless of whomever it is who stands before me, I must be willing to look with loving eyes and extend my helping hand for I am loved by God and I desire to love like him.

Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.

No Longer a Commandment but our Response

Charity at the Main Building of the University of Santo Tomas, Manila

Praised be Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!

The Lord Jesus was asked: Which commandment in the law is the greatest? He was asked for a commandment but the Lord responded with two: the commandment to love God with all one’s being and the commandment to love one’s neighbor as one’s self. In this way, the Lord tells us in very clear terms what charity or love really is. In a world where love is a much abused word, the teaching of the Lord on the two greatest commandments is very important.

First of all, we have to say that the commandments to love God and neighbor are based on the reality that God is love. It is God who can reveal to us what love is because He is love. We learn how to love because God loved us first. Love is authentic only if it imitates the love of God for us. How does God love us? He loves us by giving us himself: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…True love is self-giving. It is self sacrificing. ”Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10), love is now no longer a mere ‘command’; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.” (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1.)

Love is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us. God loved us first. We did not love him so that we may be loved by him. He loved us first and because of this, we learn to love him in return. He loved us by giving himself to us. Thus, we can only love him by giving ourselves to him: all our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. Everything we have and everything we are comes from him. Therefore, we love him with everything we have and everything we are.

Because of this, it is only God whom we should love above all. It is only God whom we should love for his own sake. All other loves are motivated by this response to God’s love for us. I am able to love my neighbor because God loves him in the way he loves me. I love myself because God loves me: “It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend.” (Deus Caritas Est, 8.)

My relationship with God enables me to see others in the way God sees them. My relationship with Him helps me see the image of God in every man. On the other hand, my love for God becomes real when I love my neighbor. For how can I love the God whom I do not see if I do not love the neighbor I see? “Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much he loves me. The saints—consider the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta—constantly renewed their capacity for love of neighbour from their encounter with the Eucharistic Lord, and conversely this encounter acquired its realism and depth in their service to others. Love of God and love of neighbour are thus inseparable, they form a single commandment. But both live from the love of God who has loved us first. No longer is it a question, then, of a ‘commandment’ imposed from without and calling for the impossible, but rather of a freely-bestowed experience of love from within, a love which by its very nature must then be shared with others. Love grows through love. Love is ‘divine’ because it comes from God and unites us to God; through this unifying process it makes us a ‘we’ which transcends our divisions and makes us one, until in the end God is ‘all in all’ (1 Cor 15:28).” (Deus Caritas Est, 8.) 

Jesus, I trust in you. O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

On Christ's Look of Love

It is also my hope that, after you have made the discernment of the essential and important questions for you youth, for the plan of the whole life that lies before you, you will experience what the Gospel means when it says: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him". May you experience a look like that! May you experience the truth that he, Christ, looks upon you with love!

He looks with love upon every human being. The Gospel confirms this at every step. One can also say that this "loving look" of Christ contains, as it were, a summary and synthesis of the entire Good News. If we would seek the beginning of this look, we must turn back to the Book of Genesis, to that instant when, after the creation of man "male and female", God saw that "it was very good".(Gen. 1:31) That very first look of the Creator is reflected in the look of Christ which accompanies his conversation with the young man in the Gospel.

We know that Christ will confirm and seal this look with the redemptive Sacrifice of the Cross, because precisely by means of this Sacrifice that "look' reached a particular depth of love. In it is contained an affirmation of man and of humanity such as only he is capable of-Christ the Redeemer and Bridegroom. Only he "knows what is in every man":(cf. John 2:25) he knows man's weakness, but he also and above all knows his dignity.

My wish for each of you is that you may discover this look of Christ, and experience it in all its depth. I do not know at what moment in your life. I think that it will happen when you need it most: perhaps in suffering, perhaps together with the witness of a pure conscience, as in the case of that young man in the Gospel, or perhaps precisely in an opposite situation: together with the sense of guilt, with remorse of conscience. For Christ looked at Peter too in the hour of his fall: when he had three times denied his Master.(cf. Luke 22:61)

Man needs this loving look. He needs to know that he is loved, loved eternally and chosen from eternity.(cf. Eph. 1:4) At the same time, this eternal love of divine election accompanies man during life as Christ's look of love. And perhaps most powerfully at the moment of trial, humiliation, persecution, defeat, when our humanity is as it were blotted out in the eyes of other people, insulted and trampled upon. At that moment the awareness that the Father has always loved us in his Son, that Christ always loves each of us, becomes a solid support for our whole human existence. When everything would make us doubt ourselves and the meaning of our life, then this look of Christ, the awareness of the love that in him has shown itself more powerful than any evil and destruction, this awareness enables us to survive.

My wish for you then is that you may experience what the young man in the Gospel experienced: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him".

John Paul II, Dilecti Amici, 7.