SATURDAY, FIRST WEEK OF LENT
Dt 26: 16-19; Ps 119: 1-2, 4-5, 7-8; Mt 5: 43-48
PERFECTED IN GOD’S LOVE
God is Love. His love created the world in which we live. His love created all things, good. The whole of nature shines forth and radiates the love of God. The Gospel today exhorts us to the most perfect love. Love is desiring to do good for others, and it is through this that we find personal fulfilment. We love not for ourselves, but for the goal of doing good to others and growing as people. According to the Second Vatican Council, “human beings cannot attain their prime unless they honestly give themselves to others”. Saint Therese of the Child Jesus says that love ‘is making a holocaust of our lives,’ Love is a human profession. To be really human, our entire behaviour must reveal the reality of our existence while fulfilling our vocation for love. St. John Paul II. says “A man cannot survive without love. He gets illogical. His existence is meaningless if love is not shown to him, if he does not find love, if he does not experience and make love his, if he does not participate in it intensely.”
God’s love in Christ is the basis and culmination of love. We are asked to converse with God. We exist for the love of God, Who created us, and for the love of God, Who sustains us, and “we can only claim we live in full realisation of the truth when we freely realise this love and totally trust our Creator” (Vatican Council II): this is the most significant reason for its dignity. In other words, human love must be kept under the care of Divine Love, which is where it comes from, where it finds its reflection, and where it may be fully realised. This is why, when love is genuinely human, it may love with God’s heart and even embrace its enemy. Otherwise, one does not genuinely love. To the point when the necessity of our offering ourselves truly becomes a holy precept: “For your part, you shall be righteous and perfect in the same manner that your heavenly Father is righteous and perfect” (Mt 5:48).
Response: Blessed are those who walk in the law of the Lord!
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