Santacruzan -- Preserving the Culture and Sharing the Faith
Imagine for a second you’re flying over a planet, a dark, smoky world torn down by violence, riots, and disharmony—a world where hate trumps love. Would you choose to stop, land, and live in it? Or would you keep on flying and continue searching for a better planet?
Well, we are here now on the only livable planet known to humanity and yet many still choose to believe that love is here and that love prevails. It has to prevail for love is what makes this planet livable and lovable.
We all need love. Singers sing and writers write of love and this desire for love, but love is not just for the artist, the poet, the seeker, or the troubadour. Love is more than a mushy feeling. The helpless newborn, the old and the young, the strong and the weak—we all have love and are all capable of love. Love is a force we may never truly and fully grasp but it is one powerful force that just draws us in. It is a force in the universe that is both moveable and immoveable. Both mutable and immutable. Like water, it’s always flowing, always giving, and always drawing us in. Our very existence depends on love—love that comes from another and love that we give to another. Love moves the universe. Love drives life. Our existence, the evolution of humankind, and the evolution of kindness have always depended on love—on love that comes from one another, on love that we give one another, and on the everlasting source of love—God’s love.
Love is deeply embedded in us, in our hearts, in our minds, and in the very fabric of our being. Science, philosophy, theology, and psychology have long illustrated this. Even the far reaches of today's scanning technology corroborate the conception that we truly are hardwired for love.
To summarize all of history, simply put, to love is to be human. We were created out of love; we love because God first loved us. We find rest in God’s love for God is love. In the midst of our restless world, God draws us to himself to find rest, peace, and joy in Him. In the words of St. Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Centuries after St. Augustine, St. Thérèse of Lisieux reiterated this very human need for respite in God when she said, “To love You as You love me I must borrow Your very Love – then only, can I find rest.” We hustle and we bustle through our days, and yet there you are, oh beauty, so ancient, and yet so new. You’ve been there all along, since the beginning of time, and yet we find ourselves refreshed, revived, and renewed by you.
A Love Story
Life is one great love story between Creator and creation, between Lover and beloved. The incomprehensible powerful force that keeps the story going is God’s love. As C.S. Lewis wrote in “The Weight of Glory”: “Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.”
Love is a mystery that draws us in and draws near to us. It’s a mystery that’s too big and too complex for the human mind to fathom so God sent us His Son. Jesus Christ came down from heaven to earth to be one of us and describe to us that very mystery of God’s love so that we might inch our way towards comprehending even just a fraction of God’s infinite love. Through His words, actions, and very life, the mystery of God’s love is revealed.
In John 13:34, Jesus gave it to us straight as a new command: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” His dying on the cross revealed to us fully what those words meant. And now we know no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (Jn 15:13).
The meaning of God’s love remains the same today as 2,000 years ago even though over time, the word has been overused, abused, and thrown out of its proper place. Yet, although we’ve all, in one way or another, misused the word (“I love pizza!”), we know that the meaning of love is deeper and more profound than our appetites and desires.
Love is more than a feeling. Love lives long after the flood of dopamine and oxytocin, the neurochemicals in the brain that make us feel the tickling of love. Love transcends the fleeting moments, both positive and negative, for love is a steadfast offering, a sacrifice. Love never fails.
Love itself is a story, with ups and downs, with moments of levity and melancholy, with pain and joy. Love is a story with no ending for love is what carries the human story forward. Love perseveres. Let the words of Saint Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, remind us once again:
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." (1 Cor 13:4-8)