July 5 Wed
"If you love me, you will keep my commandments". Love is not something lyrical and vaporous, but the fulfillment of the good and wise Will of God, our Father. The Lord, who unceremoniously censured the numerous Jewish precepts, describing them as a heavy burden (Mt 23:4), reminds me that there is no love for God and for others where there are no works that manifest this love. Jesus does not want a forced love, but a free and spontaneous love, but without confusing it with an anarchic and capricious sentimentalism.

When philosophies turn feelings or instinct into the rule to decide, confusing sincerity with comfortable obedience to my state of mind. When freedom is so often understood as license. When one appeals to one's own conscience to circumvent one's duties towards God, affirming that God cannot admit a forced service, that one does not feel, Christ says: "Whoever accepts my commandments and keeps them, he loves me.”

Thus, life is a challenge; you must take it. Do not allow yourself to be disheartened by any failure as long as you have done your best.

Sadness makes no dent in the one who remains united to God by love. What can disturb a Christian," asks St. John Chrysostom, "death? No, because he desires it as a reward. Insults? No, because Christ taught us to suffer them: 'Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you' (Mt 5:11). Sickness? Neither, because the Scripture advises: 'Receive what God commands you and be of good cheer in the vicissitudes of trial, for gold is tried in the fire, and men pleasing to God are tried in the crucible of tribulation' (Eccl. 2:5). What then is there left to trouble the Christian? Nothing. On earth, even joy often ends in sorrow; but for those who live according to Christ, even sorrows become joy.

Let us ask ourselves: Do I make the commandments of the Law of God my own? Am I interested in the objectives of the Church, of the parish, or do other interests take precedence over this principal and pleasing duty? Is my Holy Mass the worship I give to God, that He deserves, and wants? Is loving Him, and the extension of the Kingdom of Christ, the true motor of my existence?

To be a Christian is to savor, with immense, inexpressible joy, that God loves me, that he seeks me out, is interested in me and forgives my clumsy and sometimes ungrateful ways of behaving, and, consequently, to try to correspond to this love that is as great as it is undeserved.
But God, who knows the inmost heart, gives the promised reward.