“God is Love!” call bracelets, stickers, tshirts and even a sign down on Queen’s road. I’ve seen these words, often accompanied by John 3:16, on the façade of churches, at the entrance to shelters, on bright billboards along darkened roads. These three simple words are translated into every known language, yet the depth of their meaning take a lifetime to grasp and might only be explained across the Great Divide. Human love can never describe its divine origin, for our feelings are never far from the contamination of egotism and insularity, prejudice and vanity that pollute the purest expression of our most noble intentions. Dorothy Day expressed it succinctly saying, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” When we harbour even the tiniest anger, intolerance or bigotry, we subtract something essential from the scriptural command always to love and … “be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy!”
No matter where God puts us, there are only two ways through life: the Way of Nature and the Way of Love. Everyone chooses daily which one to follow. Love never tries to please itself, love accepts being offended, disliked and unappreciated. Love accepts pain and insults, hatred and ungratefulness. Love seeks harmony and unity at the cost of personal sacrifice. Love forgets itself for the greater good in a vision of what really matters when even Time has melted away. To the contrary, nature wants to please itself and get others to please it, too. Nature aims to enrich itself, while cunningly despoiling others. Worst yet, nature wants to lord it over others, enslaving, controlling, exploiting for its cold-hearted ends. Nature wants to have its way and confronts any opposition, as is equally demonstrated by spoiled children and raging dictators. Where nature wounds and divides, love erects bridges of unity across frailty and weakness.
When God is love, then his love is expressed through people. It manifests itself in tangible ways: in reconciliation, forgiveness, outreach to the needy, mutual support, solidarity with incurable suffering and genuine concern for justice and peace. Through love, what seems confusing turns into new horizons, what seems unfair turns into new opportunities, what seems discouraging turns into new insights. Whereas nature envelops with worries and anxieties that make us feel small, love instead unlocks our best, so we may have life and have it to the fullest. Let’s allow love to change our heart. Let’s start genuinely with family and friends, promoting unity, kindness and generosity; mindful that God is working through us in pursuance of his divine purpose. Let’s not forget that our words and deeds have much to say in how love moves towards fulfilling God’s Unity, that is centered on enhancing and uplifting the lives of all people.
With Dorothy Day let’s reflect, “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart. What we would like to do is change the world and make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute, we can, to a certain extent, change the world. We can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We realize there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend. With such a love one would see all things new; one would begin to see people as they really are – as God sees them.”
