The power and effects of love

Today, I invite you to read the first reading of today's liturgy as God addressing you personally. It would then read as follows:

“(insert your name) , beloved, My dear one, if God so loved you, you also must love others. No one has ever seen Me. Yet if you love one another, especially those whom you find repulsive or obnoxious, I remain in you, and My love is brought to perfection in you.

This is how you know that you remain in Me and I in you, that I have given you of My Spirit.  Moreover, you have seen and testify that I, Your Abba God, sent My Son as savior of the world. When you acknowledge that Jesus is My Son, I remain in you and you in Me. You have come to believe in the love I have for you, my Beloved, My cherished one.

I am love and whoever remains in love remains in me and I in that person. In this is love brought to perfection in you, that you have confidence on the day of judgment because as I am, so are you in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love.

But you, (insert your name), are being perfected in love through your faith in My Son, Jesus Christ, and your effort to love, first yourself so you can love others, and, second, others with whom you live and work and play.” (1 Jn 4: 11-18—I made adaptations).

Wow! What love! I am awed by this passage, especially when I think of married men and women growing in love with and for one another and for their children! All of you in marriage are truly blessed.  Those of us in religious life and/or in the single life are inspired by you but also called to grow in love excluding no one!  That, too, is a challenge but one reachable through the power of God’s love at work in us.