His Love is Faithful

Commitment can, on one hand be a very difficult concept to fully embrace, especially since everything or everyone we commit to here on earth is imperfect. No matter how we try, we will let others down or be let down ourselves. This makes it very difficult to hang on or stick with something. Commitment on a human level will always fall short in some way.

Our Father, though, is on a different plain. He is profoundly complex, yet amazingly simple. He is love. He cannot let down or disappoint; these are not in his nature. The Father has a stick-to-itiveness about him that puts us to shame.

How is his love faithful? How can we answer that? I look at myself times and wonder: would I love myself and welcome myself back? But, he always does. Because he is love and we are made in his image, he cannot deny himself. It would be like accepting a puzzle that is incomplete as finished. He knows that there is so much more to us than what we present. We are part of him…we make up his heart.

One question that I can somehow answer is, “How do I know that his love is faithful? Two ways: Jesus in the Eucharist and Reconciliation. By giving us his Son, we have access back to the Father and are allowed an intimate interaction with the very one who is most precious to him. The Eucharist gives our life meaning and because of the Cross, our suffering has reason. The Eucharist shows us that the Father is faithful because he shows that he offered his very own heart and return for our love. Because we are receiving Christ, we can see the Father as our Father and fall even more in love with him and even with those around us.

Reconciliation. I have to admit that there was a time that I didn't get it. And, therefore, denied myself access to a different aspect of love-Mercy. I know the Father's love is faithful because I can keep coming back weighed down with sin and struggle. As I utter words that take so much of myself to say, he is there along with his Son in the person of the priest…saying, “Thank you for coming. I have been waiting for you. I love you; I've never stopped loving you, and I forgive you. I will give you strength to resist these temptations.” Exiting the confessional is like crossing the threshold into the Father's arms and his loving embrace. The Son has once more led us to his Father.

The Father's love is faithful because he always wants us to be in relationship with him, know his love, and bring his love to others. This is the part that is so simple but so complex. It's not completely new information. Yet, it can be extremely difficult to accept. He sees what is hurting within us but also what is the best in us, and wants us to live out the latter.

Sometimes, he walks in front of me leading.

Sometimes, he walks behind me encouraging.

Sometimes, he walks besides me correcting.

Sometimes, he carries me and consoles me.

Sometimes, he is silent align me to grow and do on my own.

Sometimes, he comes with a whisper of wisdom on which way to go.

But always always always: he is there.

He that is love is truly faithful.

Bearing Fruit

I thought it would be beneficial to expand on the question, "How do we know that we are receiving God's love?” True love cannot contain itself and thus is contagious and grows. We hear about this in regards to a married couple having children. Love is contagious, shared, and grows in a marriage usually through the fruit of children. But, as his children, how can the Father's love be fruitful in our own lives? Even more so, love is contagious and shared when we enter into relationship with the Father.

I think there are 2 ways that our Father's love is fruitful: within our own hearts and beyond our own needs. If the Father's love is full, as was mentioned earlier, than our hearts are, in return, filled and stirred up from within. We have found what we have been looking for. So, indeed, our life changes! Instead of looking at what others can do for us or what we can do to be happy to, "How can I make others happy?” Or, "What do others need?”

A parent holding their newborn baby is not concerned with how they feel personally. The main concern, their entire beings are consumed with this child that is in their arms that is quite literally their hearts outside of themselves.The fruit of God's love is love, zeal for sharing what he's given us wanting those around us to know that they are loved...to. such. incredible. degree. For ourselves, we may find peace and joy in sharing this love, though, sometimes it can simply be the fact that we know that this love must be shared. 

Here I would like to point out that all this love sharing can seem fluffy...warm and fuzzy if you will, but it's not. Not everyone wants to be loved. Some people don't know what love is and when we try to share to love, it can be difficult. Complicated. Furthermore, not everyone is lovable... or easy to love. Some people smell or are not very pretty. And, we need the Father's love to be able to love because somedays, we don't feel loving. Allowing God's love to flow through us is not for the faint of heart. However, we still come out somehow richer and better for it because our hearts have grown larger–our capacity to love has been expanded.

This leads me to the 2nd way that God's love is fruitful: it causes our gaze to move beyond ourselves to others. Actually, it allows our gaze to rest on the Beloved. Not all newborns are pretty, but to their parents they're gorgeous beyond words. The Father's love allows us to have wisdom to see with his eyes beyond who is in front of us to Jesus within the other person. To Jesus alone, sweaty, and mutilated on the cross. Or Jesus sitting with prostitutes and tax collectors. Or Jesus helpless in his mother's arms.

The Father's love allows us to bring his children, our brothers and sisters, into his embrace through words that we choose carefully, to sharing what we've been given, to spending time with them. This is how seeds are planted, love grows and is fruitful...thus making us truly alive.

The Father's Love is Full

More than any other, the love that comes from our Father is full–complete and lacking nothing. It is full in the way that it has its own end, but also in a way that when we receive it...freely, openly, we are filled in such a way that we have reached capacity, yet on some level there somehow seems to be more that we can receive from him. As sons and daughters, we are nourished by the Father's love, we find ourselves in the Father's love, and we are made whole by the Father's love.

The Saints, once converted, were transfixed on the Father. They tasted his love and sought to live their lives to receive more. By opening their hearts to this love, they opened their hearts to eternity and saw everything that they had tried to put in its place before had paled in comparison.

How do we receive love in this way?

Whatever one asks such a question a response would probably be to "open your heart". That seems abstract on some level… so how do we do that? Pray. Still abstract for some people. Perhaps we could start on a smaller scale with saying,” yes”. (That is, by the way, a prayer, but we say yes and mean it.) What are you saying yes to? The question that the Father has been asking, “Will you let me love you?” Saying yes starts simply and allows him to enter our hearts. As the Gentleman that he is, he won't take up too much space too soon, but he will come into our lives. Then yes leads us to other statements: show me, guide me. Little by little, we have opened our hearts and have developed relationship with our Father. Then, we get to see what the saints saw while they were in formation on earth: "God's love is sweet, renewing, and necessary, and I want more.”

How do we know that we are receiving God's love?

Our perspective changes. That which brought us joy before doesn't somehow work in light of this love that we've received from him. The vices that we turned to before seem less important and depending on the nature, almost gross to us. (Although, we can still be tempted from time to time.) This is because we have come to draw pure water and to do such things again would pollute it. This is how we know that God's love is filling because we become fulfilled in a way that only connecting with him can we be fed, satisfied. No human, pet, amount of money, vice or self-help book can do this for us.

Additionally, despite the fact that the Father's love is full and complete, it doesn't cast off love or contact with other human beings. Quite the opposite… God's love is contagious and eager to be shown–that's how we were created–to want to show this love that we've been given. So the fullness of God's love leads us to love others fully and correctly in a way that brings to mind God, who is love, when we are interacting with them.