We are called to love God with all our heart,
soul, mind, and strength. But, how can we love the Father so completely? In my
mind, I picture an oil lamp burning like an angel before God’s throne.
First,
it seems that this calls for humility. We
have to see that He is our ‘other’–our beginning, our Creator. We have to see that
we are helpless on our own-very difficult in this society of independence and
achievement-that we can’t do anything without Him, and that there is no other
who can help us in this way. We need wisdom and understanding to come to
conclusions in a different way. “How can I help?”…instead of judging others.
Who am I? Who am I not? Christ was
able to love His Father completely because He had wisdom to know His place.
Wisdom and humility are tied together.
Second,
we must have temperance and fortitude. Self-control is crucial if we are going
to love completely because we will be tempted to replace emptiness with other
people or other things like money or shopping or drugs or alcohol. It seems
counterintuitive to say that we would be tempted to fill emptiness when we are
loving completely, but this kind of complete giving of ourselves is different
than what we are used to, and, at first, we might feel a perceived emptiness
and be tempted. Strength is needed to keep our focus on Him. Yes, this choice
might make us happy, but for how long?
To what extent and at what cost? Pleasure or what we want cannot always
be our goal. Love must be. Love is worth more than a fleeting, right now kind
of happiness. It lasts longer and is a greater good. Now, to clarify, it’s not
that God doesn’t want us to be happy, but He wants to be the center of our
lives, our love. By filling ourselves with Him, our joy can be complete.
We
must also have fortitude to sacrifice and to suffer as we are asked to. Love
cannot exist without sacrifice or suffering. Otherwise, we would remain
ourselves never offering or giving of ourselves–we would each remain the
singular “I.” To
live for God is to live for others. This is justice and charity… love in action.
We should always work for the greater good and strive to show others love. If
we see others as a gift, this is easier. To love in this way is come outside
ourselves while we are also looking within. We must be working towards clean
hearts, minds, and souls while we are striving to get closer to God.
Third,
faith and hope are necessary, too, because our love relationship with the
Father is less tangible than the human relationship. And, things will not
always go our way, to say the least. Sometimes, we have to grow into love. Do
not lose heart if you are suffering or going through tough times. I think this
means that the Father loves us enough to work in us, so He can work through us.
(Could suffering mean being loved more?!)
Finally,
I think that to love our Father with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is
to prayerfully, humbly, and purposefully allow Him into our being to be our
source…like oil in a lamp, so that we can become imbued with His love and to
desire nothing more than to burn for Him.
