Loveless

Man’s fundamental vocation is to find true love. True love radiates joy and generosity. It dwells in peace and kindness. True love unveils itself for it is humble and meek, sturdy and powerful.

In contrast, St Paul describes the false loves that distort and disfigure love and worse distort the person who exemplifies these defects.

It is boastful and dishonorable. It envies and is self-seeking. Emotional and drama driven. It delights in evil. It is crude and proud.

False love implodes leaving a wake of destruction and devastation; while true love creates and brings forth the patience and protection, trust and hope, and perseverance and integrity. True love casts out fear and purifies the heart doing only that which is true, good and beautiful — not in the eyes of the world, but in the eyes of God.

True love suffers the other, not asking why must I endure, but what is God’s will — lesson — for me in this suffering, hardship, or loss.

Jesus perfects our love, wanting it to be pure, unadulterated, and genuine. The source of true love is not from our heart, but from the His heart Who taught us to configure ourselves to Him, always.

The demands of his love are intense and the    intensity reveals the imperfections and limitations for human love is capricious. So states Jeremiah, who endured the false love of his persecutors:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? “I  the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds (Jer 17:9—10).

True love reveals itself in its actions, and those actions are rooted in our thoughts. St. Paul       confronts our way of thinking, the source of our love; and demands that we think like Christ. We put on the mind of Christ. Here we transform our thoughts from selfishness, putting all thoughts under the authority of Christ.

“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete” (2 Cor. 10: 5—6).

Obedience completes true love; and in our obedience to Christ, we give up any love that threatens our love of the LORD. True love, then, obeys,  trusting the will of the Father Who seeks our    eternal salvation, not our earthly comfort.

Through true prayer, we conform out will to his will as we pray the Our Father. This prayer is the perfect act of love. We surrender our will to the will of the Father embracing his will over ours.

Through this prayer we align every action and  affection under the authority of Divine Love. Divine Love controls our human love. If not, our human love becomes capricious and deviant. It perverts love turning it into lust: satisfying our need for love with false and empty substitutes. False love reveals itself when the corrections come and spite and bitterness respond.

      Narcissism epitomizes the false loves we suffer today. This self-centered love seeks to indulge one’s passions at any cost using the other person for gain while rejecting any correction. Resentment arises when anyone dares to fraternally correct.

      True love accepts the criticisms and corrections of another, even if done uncharitably. We correct another in charity, even if they react uncharitably.

True love reveals itself when despite the vitriol of the other, it humbly and meekly exposes the faults and failures of the other hoping for conversion never condemning.

The cross, then, is a sign of true love. We take it up daily, doing the right thing, even when difficult. This is sacrifice. We give up our desires for the  needs of the other, especially God’s will.

The cross that Jesus tells us to take up is to love God above all and seek first his kingdom. Only with this mindset will we be able to cut off the false and fake loves that tempt us. Putting God first purifies our hearts so that we welcome and receive anyone, of good will or evil, with righteousness.

That righteousness, as St. Paul explains lives by faith (Rom 1:17). Faith, trust in Jesus despite the cost of love.