When you say you love me...

All men seek to love, and be loved in return. In a world in which ideal love seems to be crashing down around society in backseat promises, selfishness, and fear, love is not love anymore. Well, at least, it’s not what it should be. There is now “love” and then there is love. You can take a guess at which is better.

As a Catholic, I have always understood that our calling is to love and be loved, by God and by each other. The two greatest commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). Now, loving God seems to dim, into what I would call easy, in comparison to loving neighbor. I’m not saying it’s easy to practice, but I am saying it is easy to trust that He loves us – it should be at the very least. However, due to human nature, we seem to have this fleeting idea that He’s going to fail us. So let’s take a look at the bigger picture.

Because humanity keeps spiraling into more sin, it also keeps spiraling into more selfishness. As society seems to place itself into a more selfish mentality, it also creates a fear in each person’s mind. Even the selfish person can logically put two and two together that if he would act in one way selfishly, then so might another. The result: a highly selfish and fearful world that continues to act selfishly to protect each himself from the selfishness of others. It’s a spiral downward from there in a mind-numbing relationship between selfishness and fear. And well, the only way to come out of it would be to let down that stone wall each person is building and learn to trust in order to love. An odd relationship, but a necessary one.

Humanity is supposed to mirror God. The perfect Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is given to us to help us see how to perfectly love. And then there’s the image of Christ and his Church. These relationships are unselfish and untainted. Yet, we perpetually shine our own image on God instead of the way it was created to be, with God’s image reflecting on us. Even Christ knew and trusted the Father as He prayed in his agony in the garden of Gethsemane. This trust is filled with rewards and joy. Love is not easy, and yet, it is those people filled with it that are the most joyful (hint: there is sometimes a difference between happiness and joy…). So trust in Love. Trust in God, when he says he loves us, he really means it. He already proved it on that cross over two thousand years ago.