TO BE MORE precise, everything, regardless of what and how it is, can and should be an occasion, an instrument, a material for loving God and for everybody else. Whether it is good or bad, according to our human standards, or a success or failure, a win or a loss, as long as it is referred to Christ and united to his love for us, it can spawn and develop the love that is proper to us.
The secret is to refer everything to Christ who has identified himself with us in all our possible human events, conditions and situations and has converted everything into a means for authentic loving.
Let’s remember that when Christ is ignored or when things are not referred to him, whatever good we may have in this life would only spoil us. And whatever misfortune we suffer would only destroy us.
With Christ, everything acquires meaning and reason. If things are good, Christ would teach us how to keep on loving by continually praising and thanking God and by continually serving the others in every which way. We would remain service-oriented, never bossy or complacent.
When things are bad, Christ would teach us how to bear it, how to find meaning in it by showing that it can be a means for our purification and instrument for the salvation of all mankind. Even the worst scenario in our life would have a positive and constructive value. We would never feel oppressed by whatever misfortune we may suffer.
We should never forget this truth of our faith. We are meant for loving. God created us for love. We ought to be in love always — in good times and bad, or as the marriage vows would put it: “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
We should not allow ourselves to be trapped by the technicalities of the drama or the ups and downs of our earthly life. While it’s true that we have to attend to the technicalities of our life, we should not forget that the ultimate anchor that would give stability to our life is when we manage to love the way God loves us as shown to us by Christ.
We should always check ourselves if this love is working in our life all the time. As much as possible, this love should be felt by us. It should be the one that drives us, that gives impulses to our thoughts, desires, words and actions.
If we still do not have that love, if we do not feel it yet, then it is time for us to work on it, asking and begging Christ for it, and developing the appropriate attitude, virtues and skills.
We should try our best that we are not guided mainly by our own human estimations of things, like our feelings and emotions, or even our intellectual insights, or some social or political consensus. These cannot capture the global picture of things.
We have to be guided by our faith that would go together always with hope and charity. It is this divine gift that gives us the global picture of things and the basis for hoping and loving.
It is this living faith that would enable us to convert everything in our life into an occasion, a means, an instrument and a material for loving God and everybody else. In other words, there is nothing in our life that cannot be made use of to live out the love we are supposed to have.
Whatever the condition, circumstance, situation, we can manage to love! We would never have a dull moment, even in our periods of tiredness, weakness, etc./PN
