To hear a beloved says “I love you” is beautiful, but it is even more beautiful if a beloved loves you in deeds (actions) too. There are separated couples who would recall their experience admitting that it is easy for their beloved to say “I love you” but their actions speak otherwise.
A husband would say he loves his wife but asks his wife to understand his philandering as part of manliness. A woman would say she loves her husband yet she has the bad habit of yelling at the top of her lungs sometimes for no reason at all. There are also couples who do not pay attention to each other’s needs. One will try to explain something that is important to them, and the other will say, “yes, yes,” but will not really hear. In addition, there are couples who fall into bad habits in their fighting. Ordinarily, couples will disagree from time to time but sometimes they show no love for each other when they argue. A spouse would throw dishes instead. Still another would bring up old arguments to try to hurt the other.
In short, to say I love you is one thing, but to show it through one’s actions is another thing.
Now as a Christian, we are reminded of the same thing by our gospel that we should not just say WE LOVE, but we have to show in our actions that indeed WE LOVE. We have to walk our talk!
In Matthew 22:37 Jesus said –You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. His words clearly show the extent of the command: there is no action in the life of a person which should not be dedicated to the Lord. If we love God then show it through our actions.
But why do most of us fail to love God in our actions though we can boldly say we do love Him? Well, it is because we fall into a wrong notion of loving God.
My dear friends, before we say we love God, we examine ourselves if we recognize the love of God for us. In 1 John 4:19, it is said WE LOVE GOD BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US. Love of God always presupposes a prior experience of God’s love, and God offers most of us abundant evidence of such love, usually indirectly through the goodness of others and of our mother nature. The most concrete manifestation of God’s love for us is Jesus, which in 1 John 3:16 declares –this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. So the proper response to our experience of God’s love is to love Him in return. God loved us first and our love for Him is a response to his amazing grace to us.
Yet our love of God does not stop there. In Matthew 22: 39 Jesus added, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. No one can therefore say he loves God unless he loves his neighbor as himself. This is tantamount to say that the more we acknowledge God's love for us the more we must love what He loves. The love we have for others gives us the barometer of how we love God through our actions. In 1 John 3:16-17, this is what God ordains us to do: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?
Therefore my dear friends; to desire to love God without loving others is a mission impossible. We must follow Jesus who loved God His Father through loving all of us. And when we experience trials and persecutions, let us be reminded of our theme for the upcoming feast of St. Jude: Remain in your love of God like St. Jude who chose life rather than death. It means that we can show our love for God even in the most undesirable circumstances by choosing to live and not give up life. God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us (Romans 5:5). Let our love conquers all!
