This is how our spiritual life should be, how our relation with God and with everybody else should be. It will always involve the dynamic of pivoting from where we are at the moment to another and higher level of love and self-giving.
We have to be wary of our tendency to be contented with what we may already have achieved in terms of loving. We should see to it that we continue to break new frontiers in loving. Despite our limitations, we know that with God, nothing is impossible. Things would just depend on us, on how we are receptive and corresponsive to God who loves us first and teaches us and enables us to love the way he loves.
Let’s not be deceived by the rationalization that we have already given much. St. Augustine somehow warned us of that danger when he said to the effect the in our spiritual life, if we do not move forward, we actually move backward. There’s no such thing as a stable point in loving.
Heroism is the name of the game of our life. We have to go all the way until we give up our life, channeling the same love that Christ showed us. He gave up his life out of love for us and in fidelity to God the Father’s will.
For this, we really need to continually ask God for grace, light and strength, so we may know what we ought to do. We have to make plans and strategies to carry out this ideal of love meant for us.
We have to remember that God already has given us everything so we can love the way he loves us. As Christ said: “To whom much is given, much will be required.” (Lk 12,48) We have been blessed with talents, wealth, knowledge, or time and are expected to use these gifts to help others and to give glory to God.
Definitely, loving will always involve and, in fact, require sacrifice. Where there is no sacrifice, there cannot be love. Love grows only to the extent that we are willing to make sacrifices. Without sacrifice, we sooner or later will be swallowed up by our own egoism, our own selfishness.
And this selfishness can take the form of laziness, attachment to certain things to the point of self-absorption, etc. We have to be ready to do battle against these anomalous tendencies of ours.
We should always remember that the very essence of love is self-giving. In love, the lover needs to lose himself in his beloved. He has to be identified with his beloved. And this will always involve self-denial.
The self-giving and losing that love requires would actually enrich the person in his dignity. This way of loving conforms to what Christ himself said: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 16,25)
That’s why Christ himself said that if anyone wants to follow him, that person has to deny himself and, in fact, should carry the cross also. Otherwise, he cannot love. And true love is personified in Christ himself.
In other words, we can only love truly when we identify ourselves with Christ who precisely commanded us to love one another as he himself has loved us. We have to understand that only in Christ would we manage to keep our love alive and vibrant, always fresh, new and creative. It’s a love that is open to anything, and willing to go through all the challenges, trials, difficulties, etc.
In short, only with Christ can we manage to pivot from the customary to the heroic, from the traditional to the innovative, etc.(Fr. Roy Cimagala)
