It's All About Love- our Default Intention and Motivation

Too many people today suffer from depression, discouraged by failures, directionless, lacking in motivation even to live or do anything. Many still are wrongly motivated. They chase after material success, careers, comfort, money, fame, pleasure--all for some form of greatness. They may seem to have a sense of purpose and meaning in life. Nevertheless, these also are simply a vanity. For after all the worldly success, then what? Still many others, already advanced in age, are still searching, trying to find meaning and purpose in life.

The good news is God, our Creator, already revealed to us the purpose and meaning of life. He even sent his only Son to assume our human nature, becoming one like us in all things but sin, to teach us concretely how to live, that is–to love the Father above all things by doing His will, and to love others for the love of God. Sounds simplistic? Because it is simple. Yet many simply miss it, complicating life uselessly. It's all about love– the one motivation for living, the one purpose and meaning of life.

Yes, we are here in this world to know, love, and serve God and to be happy with Him in eternity. We know God by faith, assenting to His Self-Revelation in Jesus. But how do we love
God (Whom we do not see)? By serving Him. And we serve him by doing His will. His will is manifested to us through the moral law, first through the Natural law written in our hearts. Its primary moral precepts are known to everyone: we should worship God; we should control our sensual appetites; we should not do unto others what we would not have them do to us; we should honor our parents. Every normal person knows these fundamental moral principles. Furthermore God explicitly gave us the Ten Commandments, the immediate conclusions deriving from these basic moral principles written in our hearts. Now to accent the positive, we have the Corporal and Spiritual works of Mercy. And finally Jesus fulfilled and perfected the Law, and gave us the New Commandment: “love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12; 13:34), even our enemies, the perfection of charity.

So there we have it; we know and can obey God's Will to prove our love for Him. “This is what loving God is--keeping His Commandments” (1Jn 5:3).

It is easy to realize we are loving God when we do something extraordinarily good for another, concretely, for love of God, and rightly so. But actually anything we do that is morally good and therefore consonant with God's will can be acts of love for God. Even menial tasks, or even morally indifferent acts, when done for the honor and glory of God are acts of love and are pleasing to Him. Thus: “Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God” (1Cor 10:31). Hence the importance of always beginning our day with the morning offering. St. Therese reminds us to “do small things with great love”. “One act of pure love is worth more in God's sight than all other works put together.” (St. John of the Cross).

We are also loving God by humbly accepting whatever He allows to happen to us, (be it good or bad), which is within His permissive will. So everyday, every moment can be occasions of acts of pure love.

No wonder Jesus spent eighteen long years of his life hidden in the ordinary day to day life in Nazareth– to show us that we can grow in wisdom and grace and greater love of God in our ordinary day to day life. “Christ's work of Redemption was in the form of an act of infinitely perfect love, expressed in the act of infinitely perfect obedience that compromised his whole life upon earth. [“My food is to do the will of the one who sent me” (Jn 4:34).] Christ’s death upon the Cross was the climax of this act of obedience; all that went before Calvary, and all that followed after, was a part of his sacrifice too.” “Calvary was the peak, the summit of the redemptive act. Nazareth, like Bethlehem, was a part of the slope that led to it.” (from “The Faith Explained” by Leo Trese). “The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life” (of family and work) (CCC 533, 564).

We too can live our ordinary lives extraordinarily if our default intention and motivation is pure love. Amidst our seemingly boring daily routine our love for God can and should deepen and intensify, leading us closer and closer to Him. It can be likened to a spiral stairway reaching up to a height, the spiral stairs referring to our daily routine of work and family life lived for God. These simple but continual acts of love lessen our selfishness, a result of our wounded nature, and builds up our capacity for heroic acts of charity when called for.

You see, it's all about love, from the moment we wake up till we retire at night, and even in our sleep. Everything can be offered to God in praise and thanksgiving –loving God by doing His will in everything, and loving our neighbor for the love of God. This is our happiness and joy. Then will there be for us a fruition of love in the life hereafter (Heaven). But without love it's all going to be misery going forward– on to Hell.