By Fr. Roy Cimagala
IT’S love, of course. But the real one, not the fake ones that are proliferating around these days. It’s the love that comes from God, is a participation of God’s love for all of us, irrespective of who and how we are. It’s a love that goes all the way, without counting the cost, and unafraid of all the sacrifices involved.
It’s the love that will always make us young, new and refreshed, in spite of the passing of years. It is self-renewing and creative, and never runs out of initiatives to look and try new ways of expressing that love in deeds. But it is also respectful of tradition and faithful to commitments made in the past and meant to last till death or forever.
It’s the love that is not afraid of problems, challenges, trials, failures, mistakes, difficulties, suffering, etc. It does not surrender to them even if death overtakes it. It regards them as opportunities and occasions to grow more in love, to grow more in trust in God’s loving providence where everything works for the good as long as we cooperate with him. It’s a love that will always fill us with peace and joy whatever the situation.
We have to understand that this kind of love can only be had if we try our best to be with God, to identify ourselves with him through Christ in the Holy Spirit. This kind of love can only be had if we pray always, if we constantly look for Christ, find him, serve him and imitate him, making him direct and shape our daily life.
This kind of love can only be had if we have recourse to the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist where we have Christ offering himself as the bread of life. In that way, our love acquires a supernatural power that goes infinitely beyond our natural powers. With him, what we cannot do or solve are all taken care of.
Yes, we have to do our part, and we, in fact, should give our all. But we do it always with Christ. With him we would not be afraid where our love and our life will take us. He takes care of everything. What he simply expects from us is to trust him and to try our best to cooperate with him. We therefore would always have hope. And we would always find meaning in everything we experience in life.
Let us see to it then that we are with Christ always. He is real and alive, and not just a figment of our desire to believe. We do not make him up in our mind. More than that, he is full of love for us, full of solicitude toward us. He always has us in his mind and heart. And he is actually actively intervening in our life at every moment. There is no moment when he is indifferent to us. If we are lost, he, like the Good Shepherd, will take the pains to look for usand rescue us.
We have to learn to discern his presence and his constant interventions in our life. That is why, we need to develop certain practices of piety so that we also can properly and actively correspond to his constant interventions of love for us.
Perhaps, we can make use of a certain plan of life that would include, for example, some moments of mental prayer, so that right from the start of the day, we can already feel the intimacy of his presence and actions in our life. Then, having a recourse to the sacraments, especially Confession, the Holy Mass and Communion, would definitely be helpful.
Let us have those practices that would help us live always in his presence: regular spiritual reading, some devotions like the Holy Rosary, the Angelus, etc.
Email: roycimagla@gmail.com
