Reflection
We believe that the One we call God is the Origin of all that is. To love as God loves is to love freely and gratuitously. It is a love based in a realization that we are a part of the universe not the center of it, a true knowledge and confidence in ourselves and a genuine caring for all others. It holds all creation in reverence, all living things with wonder and care, and all people with respect. On a personal level, it is to try to love rather than seeking to be loved. It is the challenge to try to offer a selfless love that makes no demands.
Prayer
O Divine Master grant that I may not so much seek
To be loved as to love.
Francis of Assisi
Action
Try to discover in yourself the things that prevent you from loving others freely rather than expecting constant affirmation and support.
Suggested Reading
As God has loved me,so I have loved you.
Remain in my love.
This is my commandment:
Love one another as I have loved you.
John 15: 9 -!0, 12-13
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is despair, hope
O Divine Master grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console
\To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
The Prayer of St. Francis
The secret of Christian living is love. Only love fills the empty spaces caused by evil.
Pope Francis
Love is the beauty of the soul.
Saint Augustine
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
Dalai Lama
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
Carl Sagan
A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.
Thomas Carlyle
Loving-kindness and compassion are the basis for wise, powerful, sometimes gentle, and sometimes fierce actions that can really make a difference — in our own lives and those of others
Sharon Salzberg.
The only way love can last a lifetime is if it’s unconditional. The truth is this: love is not determined by the one being loved, but rather by the one choosing to love.
Stephen Kendrick
Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means.
Leo Buscaglia
The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.
Martin Buber
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine Saint-Exupéry