The Virtue Series: Love part 2

The Virtue Series:

Love part 2

The great commandment to love entails loving God, loving neighbour and loving ourselves.  God showed His love in the sacrifice of His Son, and by His continual outpouring of grace to humanity.

The following Scripture passages show how we are to demonstrate our love for God.

·                     John`14:15-17: God hears our prayers and desires to reveal Himself to us. We need to show our love by being receptive and desiring a relationship with Him.

·                     I John 2:3-6: God answers our prayers. He is a loving Father who gives us good gifts.  At times we may feel that our prayers are not answered, but God gives us what is best for us in every way.

·                     I John 5:3: We can be sure that God desires for us to hope in Him. If we ask God for the grace to grow in this virtue, God will give us the desire of our heart.

Loving God is essential, but we also need to show our love for God by loving our neighbour in actions. The following verses exemplify the reward for showing love to our neighbour.

·                     Matthew 25:34-40: God Commands us to love our neighbour, which means caring for those in need.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that those who perform spiritual and corporal works of mercy will inherit their eternal reward (2447).

·                     Hebrews 6:10: Our service to our neighbour is seen as service to God and will be rewarded in Heaven

·                     I John 3:17-18: We love God by caring for our neighbor, which will gain for us our heavenly reward.

·                     I John 4:7-12: If we show God our love for Him by loving our neighbour, we will gain eternal life.

You will note that in each of these Scripture passages, our reward is eternal life, which demonstrates God's generosity and lavishness upon us. Of course, we are also reminded in scripture that if we love our neighbour with a fanfare of notoriety, and only doing good to those who do us good, we will have had our reward.

God wants our love for Him to be genuine and to show it in action by loving our neighbour.

We are also to show our love for God by loving ourselves in a healthy manner. God created us in His own image. We can show our love for Him by looking after ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually. Loving ourselves in a healthy manner is not selfish. Being self-absorbed and excessive navel gazing is of course selfish, but loving our physical, emotional and spiritual well-being helps us to radiate first to ourselves God's image in us.  It provides a platform from which we can attract others to God by who we are. 

When it comes to love, actions speak louder than words.  We do not have to go off on a white horse to do battle, but the battle field of love is won in the day to day tasks done lovingly that speak the loudest. It is in the conversations where the truth needs to be said, but is stated lovingly, in the conversations that you bite your tongue to hold back an observation, because you know the hearer is not ready to receive it, in the daily tasks at home or at work which are achieved (with a special intention in mind) and completed out of love for God.

Jesus tells us quite clearly ' whatsoever you do/not do to the least of my brethren, you do/not do unto Me'. 

This is the key to this virtue, which I believe often gets overlooked- we are loving God, our neighbour and ourselves out of love for God.- that is the goal.

Let us redouble our efforts to love God, neighbour and ourselves out of love for God during the coming week, and pray for an increase of grace in this virtue.   

God then will indeed say to us:
' well done good and faithful servant,
come and enter into your master's happiness'

Next week: Mary the mother of God and love.
This will be be the last post in this series. 

So, stay tuned and if you have missed some of the other posts in this series, why not take a look.