Love One Another

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment.” Mark 12:30

How do we love God? This is expressed above all in prayer, for what person loves without minding the object of his love? We need to waste time with our Father, first of all. Thomas Brooks said this was a “secret key to heaven”. Prayer is absolutely vital to a human being. We need to pray as much as we need to breathe! 

I love what St. Augustine wrote, “Prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours." Indeed God thirsts for us to be close to Him, hungers for our love, waits for our communication. We will never encounter a God like Him in other religions or in the atheistic mindset because He is implausible. How can we hold in our mind a God who is timeless but entered time, all powerful but allowed Himself to be weak and tortured by the very creatures He came to save? Implausible. 

It is this same God who desires to live in communion with us. Just as the Father, Son and Spirit, live in constant love, in community with one another, we are also called to live in communion with each other. To love one another. 

It is ironic that this world is so interconnected now. We can easily talk to a friend halfway around the world through Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. But how many actually do so? Families and friends are usually gathered about a table with their noses buried in their cellphones! 

When I am answering a message on my phone, or reading something on it, my little apo (grandchild) will put his tiny hands, one on each side of my face, so that I will concentrate on what he is saying. His earnest little face so close to my own reminds me there is nothing more important to this little person than connection. 

Sadly, there is a global mental health crisis. More people are lonely, depressed, starved of love. Although Generation Z (aged 18-22) is perhaps the most technologically connected, in the UCLA loneliness scale, they are the loneliest generation in America! Again, we need to waste time not only with God, but with our loved ones, our friends, our brothers and sisters. And leave our phones in our pockets. 

“Preaching to Myself”