God Is Love

St. John the evangelist was only a young boy, perhaps 14 years old, when he first began to follow Jesus. In the three years that Jesus was alive on this earth, John came to know the intensity of the love of God for human beings. And the knowledge of this love changed his life. St. Polycarp says that, when John was an old man, his homilies had been reduced to saying that we should love God because God is love and he first loved us. This is the core of the Gospel message.

And how can we ever understand this message of love? While we were sinners, Christ died for us out of love, so I am to love others even when they are sinners. God loves us even when we don’t know him, so we must love others even when they don’t know him. God loves us, even when we reject him, so God asks us to love others even when they reject us. God loves those who killed him, so we must love those who harm us. God is love and he asks us to be perfect in love even as he is perfect in love.

God loves you. Your dysfunction may keep you from thinking that God could not possibly love you, but he does. The question is do we love God? One preacher said that we love God as much as a person we hate the most. We cannot love God whom we do not see if we do not love the people we do see.

God did not wait for me to be perfect before he loved me, so I cannot wait for someone else to be perfect before I love them. God did not wait for me to forgive before he forgave me, so I cannot wait for someone to forgive before I forgive them. God did not wait for me to come to him: instead he came to me, so I must go to others even when they don’t come to me.

Our feelings of brokenness can come between ourselves and God. We need to accept the fact that God loves us. We need to conquer these feelings of brokenness, because God loves us anyway. Accept the fact that God loves us first. We are to love one another as he has loved us. We cannot be loners. We must love God and our neighbor as he has loved us. We must be lovers.

Thoughts from a homily by Father David Engo, FBM