Nov 16 Thu
"To love is not so much to speak; to love is to live. One can speak about love all day long, and not love even once". Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Once during an interview, she was asked: "Could you tell us what truly love is?"
She promptly answered: "To love is to give oneself. God has so much loved the world that he gave us his Son. Jesus has loved so much the world, he has loved you so much, he has loved me so much, that he gave his life for us. He wants that we love as he loved us. And so now, we must love until it hurts. True love is to give, to give until it hurts.”
Saint John Paul II spoke of the "law of gift" written in our human nature: Human accomplishment and happiness are reached only when we live this "law”: when we give ourselves.
It is a paradox, if we give ourselves to God and to our neighbor, the results are our accomplishment and happiness. If we focus on our happiness and accomplishment (in a selfish way, "me first"), then we reach neither happiness nor self-accomplishment.
"Love always detaches the person from himself, and leads one towards the other. Love is the final gift of oneself to the other. When we stop giving, we stop loving; when we stop loving, we stop growing; but only in growing we reach personal accomplishment. If we do not love, we do not open ourselves to receive life from God. It is through love that we meet God.”
The practice of charity (by the personal apostolic activity) is within everyone's reach in all phases of life. It is the priestly and "pastoral" vocation of every ordinary Christian, man and woman. Every one of us has the mission to be a carrier of Christ's love. "God loves the world so much that he placed me and you to love the world, to be his love, his compassion. It is a certainty that you and I can reach to be that love and that compassion".
The ones that have more hunger, more thirst for God, and for His love, these are the ones to whom we own more … the ones closer to us. "How can we love Jesus in today's world? Loving him in your spouse, in the children, in your neighbor, in the poor". In fact, the ones with whom we live are the ones that need him more. Then the open circle of our love for God, and then our family, will welcome all your neighbors.
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