The Power of Love

Today’s second reading from the Office of Readings is taken from a letter to the Corinthians by Saint Clement I, Pope.  In it he teaches the lesson of love.  If love is to be the guiding rule of our lives; if love is to be the conduct or stance with which we meet all challenges; if it is to be that with which we meet hate, we should learn of it, imitate it, and desire to possess it above all things.  Here’s what Clement I said about love:

Let the [person] truly possessed by the love of Christ keep his commandments.  Who can express the binding power of divine love?  Who can find the words for the splendor of its beauty?  Beyond all description are the heights to which love lifts us.  Love unites us to God; it cancels innumerable sins….Out of love the Lord took us to himself; because he loved us and it was God’s will, our Lord Jesus Christ gave his life’s blood for us—he gave his body for our body, his soul for our soul.

Indeed finding the words to do justice for love is not an easy task.  One cannot encapsulate love in mere words.  The scripture teaches us that God is love, and many are the times I have made reference to this, because we human beings know love.  Love is tangible and within our ability to experience and express.  Yet we tend only know it on the surface regardless of how deep our hearts plunge into its mysteries. Love is before us, deep and abiding eternally, giving meaning to life.  Love awaits our discovery; love beckons to the depths of human ability.  Amazingly, God made us to hold love in our hearts--we may hold it in a way that knows no limits.

Perhaps some may worry about their being undeserving of the love that has the power to remove all sins.  However, it is love that makes us able to receive the forgiveness that makes our lives new, and that enters to heal every situation of life that seems to challenge us most.  It is God’s grace that makes us able to be vessels capable of receiving the love that saves the soul.

Failures in love are bound to happen on our part to one degree or another.  If we’re honest with ourselves we realize this.  We ask God to forgive us as we forgive others, so we go to the place in our hearts where we have failed--sometimes we can go to the people involved and at other times not--but the important thing is to ask God to heal us precisely in the places where there has been failure.  Love is such that it doesn’t give up.  Clement said that it “has no limits to its endurance.”  Where we fail in loving others we may return and seek God all the more.  Really we must be resilient in loving others since it is love that will ultimately save us.

Allow love to triumph over today’s struggles.  Allow it to permeate the day and set the tone for the work week.  Let love conquer everything that stands in its way.  The miracle is that it’s all happening in you.  You are allowing yourself to be a place where love can make you perfect.  In doing so you are changing the world.  

Comments

[C]

Amen.