Reflection
Love is something that brings us into relationship with each other. It is the one common link that every human has in God to every other person who has ever lived. It bonds us and binds us together. The love that we are called to share for one another as Christians is a love that does not fail. “Love each other as I have loved you!” Jesus did not make any exceptions to this central directive; he did not allow prejudices, bigotry, intolerances and hatred to be built into it. He simply stated his expectation.
Prayer
Lord, where there is hatred let me sow love.
Action
Consider yourself, other people you know who claim to be Christian, public persons who make the same claim- how is the love commanded by Jesus reflected by these lives? Is there an area in your life where bonds have been strained or broken? How can this best be repaired?
Suggested Reading
As God has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my God’s commands and remain in God’s love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my God I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then God will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.
John 15:9-17
Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
Romans 13:10
The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
Mother Teresa
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.
Thomas Merton
A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
Thomas Carlyle
Do all things with love.
Og Mandino
Love all of God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love.
Fyodor Dostoyevski
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
Rumi