MORE LOVE, LORD, MORE AND MORE!
Thursday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
My dear encountered couples:
Are there limits to our love? Do we love only the deserving or also the undeserving? Is what we do for others based upon their responses or upon their needs? The truthful answer to those questions might determine the amount of love we can acquire.
When there are limits to our love, when our love is based upon conditions, it is quite possible that the love in us advances only to a certain point and not beyond. On the other hand, when we show love without conditions, when we do for people not because of their merits but just because, it is possible that love in us grows and grows and grows — grace upon grace, as they say. Maybe that is what Jesus is trying to tell us when he says:
“In the measure you give you shall receive, and more besides. To those who have, more will be given; from those who have not, what little they have will be taken away.”
Unless love in us grows it quite possibly will diminish. For when we hold love in check, when we place limits or conditions on our love, do not our hearts become hardened? And when a heart becomes hardened, does not the love in it dry up? If we say, “Enough! I will love you no further; no more will I do for you,” it is evident our love will not grow. But will it decrease?
When we pray let us ask for a fitting measure of everything with one exception: LOVE! We need to pray for God to put as much love into us as we can get. But our love will not increase unless we use generously what we already have. Only in the measure we give will we receive, “and more besides,” says the Lord.
