Living The Worthy Life: Our Relationships With Others

Living The Worthy Life: Our Relationships With Others

"You must remember to love people and use things, rather than to love things and use people." - Fulton Sheen

Our relationship with others often mirrors our very own relationship with God. How can this possibly be? The answer is found in these three main points.

First, we must be able to love other people, and to do so, we must be able to love ourselves. This is difficult if we are living in sin. At this point, we know or realize what we are doing and we know it to be wrong. According to the Catechism of The Catholic Church we see:

PART THREE

LIFE IN CHRIST

SECTION TWO

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

CHAPTER TWO

"YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF"

Jesus said to his disciples: "Love one another even as I have loved you."1

2196 In response to the question about the first of the commandments, Jesus says: "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."2

The apostle St. Paul reminds us of this: "He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, You shall not kill, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,' and any other commandment, are summed up in this sentence, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law."

Second, we must love the Lord, our God. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this means:

PART THREE

LIFE IN CHRIST

SECTION TWO

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

"YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND"

2083 Jesus summed up man's duties toward God in this saying: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This immediately echoes the solemn call: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD."

God has loved us first. The love of the One God is recalled in the first of the "ten words." The commandments then make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God.

Third, we should live a Christ-centered life and believe in our faith. This is explained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

PART ONE

THE PROFESSION OF FAITH

SECTION TWO

THE PROFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

CHAPTER THREE

I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY SPIRIT

ARTICLE 9

"I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH"

Paragraph 1. The Church in God's Plan

NAMES AND IMAGES OF THE CHURCH

751 The word "Church" (Latin ecclesia, from the Greek ek-ka-lein, to "call out of") means a convocation or an assembly. It designates the assemblies of the people, usually for a religious purpose.139 Ekklesia is used frequently in the Greek Old Testament for the assembly of the Chosen People before God, above all for their assembly on Mount Sinai where Israel received the Law and was established by God as his holy people.140 By calling itself "Church," the first community of Christian believers recognized itself as heir to that assembly. In the Church, God is "calling together" his people from all the ends of the earth. The equivalent Greek term Kyriake, from which the English word Church and the German Kirche are derived, means "what belongs to the Lord."

752 In Christian usage, the word "church" designates the liturgical assembly,141 but also the local community142 or the whole universal community of believers.143 These three meanings are inseparable. "The Church" is the People that God gathers in the whole world. She exists in local communities and is made real as a liturgical, above all a Eucharistic, assembly. She draws her life from the word and the Body of Christ and so herself becomes Christ's Body.

Bishop Fulton Sheen summarized it best when he told us, "You must remember to love people and use things, rather than to love things and use people." Now, all we have to do is live it. The Church is a building a meeting place for people to gather together- a physical building but it is also much more than just the building. It is the foundation of our lives and our eternal soul. We must act like this at all times and refrain from treating others poorly and live a life that is Christ-centered now and forever. Amen