Discriminating but not discriminatory love
WE need to love everyone. And since it is love we are talking about, we have to give the best that we have, if not all of ourselves, to everyone. This, in the end, is what is meant to be discriminating but not discriminatory.
Love is a never-ending affair that requires total self-giving that is always renewed. By its very nature, it is meant to be given to everyone and requires the giving of oneself to everyone.
Christ is the model for this. He, in fact, commands us to love everyone as he himself loves us. And the details of this love can be found in the beatitudes, in the sermon of the mount, in the greatest commandment and the second greatest that he articulated when asked, and in the fact that he offered his life on the cross for us.
In fact, everything in his life speaks eloquently of love. He discriminates against no one. Even the sinners, even those who crucified him, he loved, since he was always solicitous of their condition and literally begged for their conversion and transformation. He even asked forgiveness from his Father on their behalf.
We need to have this attitude deeply embedded in our consciousness, and from there, develop the appropriate skills, practices and habits as well as structures that would turn this ideal into concrete reality.
We have to be wary of the danger of complacency, lukewarmness and self-satisfaction that can deceive us into thinking we are doing enough when there is nothing enough where love is concerned.
These are our proximate and constant dangers. And they come about due to our weaknesses and sinfulness. We tend to be lazy, and to be improperly dominated by our preferences and other attachments that blind us from giving what we ought to everyone.
We need to acknowledge these weaknesses and sinfulness in all their manifestations, and with humility ask the help of God to overcome them and even to use them to do the things God wants us to do for others. This is the proper way to deal with this predicament of ours.
If we have the proper attitude toward our weaknesses and sinfulness, an attitude rooted on our faith, these weaknesses and sinfulness would not be a big, insoluble problem. They can even be a vehicle to do wonderful things out of love.
Let's remember what St. Paul once said: "To them that love God, all things work together unto good..." (Rom 8,28) It's important that we continue to have a gung-ho attitude toward our life in spite of our shortcomings, failures and mistakes.
With Christ's redemptive work carried to its fullness in his passion, death and resurrection, we have no reason to be sad due to our weaknesses. Besides, sadness only complicates things and hinders us to do what we are supposed to do.
We just have to wage a continuing struggle against our tendency to get wrapped up in our world, oblivious of the needs of the others and of the reality outside. This bad tendency can be shown in our inclination to be lazy, self-centered, arrogant, vain, greedy, lustful, distracted, attached to material and worldly things, etc.
We have to try our best to develop a universal heart, able to love everyone including those whom we may consider to be unlovable or whom with our human estimations we regard as our enemies.
We just have to rev up our concern for the others to a heroic degree, never sparing in our generosity, especially in our prayers and sacrifices for them which, before being expressed into concrete deeds, are the fundamental and indispensable ways of showing our love for others.
For this, we have to be willing to be understanding and compassionate with the others, ever mindful and thoughtful of them, quick to forgive, slow to anger as Christ is, eager to bear all their burdens without complaining.
For this we have to train especially our emotions and passions that usually react to things at the instance of our mere natural, if not, physical appreciation of things. We have to purify them with our faith, hope and charity, through prayers, study of the doctrine of our faith, sacrifices and mortification, and other spiritual and ascetical exercises.
This is how we can be truly discriminating in our love for everyone, excluding no one. Obviously, given our human condition constrained by space and time, we need to have strategies that require us to be selective in our love if only to reach everyone in the best way.
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