The People of Love

As January ends, many souls turn to Valentine’s Day, dreaming of love in their hearts.

Yet even though there are many hearts united to another soul, there is a certain sense of emptiness in the world.

We often think of the suffering around the globe. There are families who starve and die from malaria. There are murderers roaming busy streets, stalking defenseless prey. Divorce rates continue to soar, even though we changed the definition of marriage to be “more inclusive.” What’s worse, the #metoo movement is arguably one of the largest social media campaigns of all time, and it does not look like it is slowing down.

And we’re supposed to believe that love exists?

From the sheer number of rom-com’s and cute love songs, we still seem to believe in the romantic side of love. Some of us are able comprehend that romantic love will become more difficult over time, but even then we are aware of its finite nature. Whether it ends in the tragedy of divorce or the tragedy of death, we all end up alone in some way or another.

How sad.

How incredibly sad.

We are all searching for something more. Somewhere in our hearts resides a hope in a forever love, the kind that prevails over the worst of circumstances. Yet the suffering of this world, whether it be near or far, shadows this little light in our hearts. We look around us and see the absence of love: evil.

No way could love last forever.

No one on Earth could possibly make that work.

But what if love did not come from us? What if love itself was beyond our scope of understanding, and it was given to us in order to heal the broken parts of our world? What if love was more than just a feeling, just a single relationship, just a small thing in our hearts that keeps us going?

The little bit of hope we hold on to is a belief in a love that is transcendent.

Regardless of how we define it, each soul believes in the God of Love.

Unfortunately, there is more to believing in the God of Love than a simplistic faith. Love, being a transcendent gift, is something that needs to be given in order to be received. It is like putting on a shirt. We can look at it online or on an mannequin, but we really do not know what the shirt looks like on us until we see it in the mirror.

Love looks different on every soul, but we have to learn how to give it to others in order to be able to understand that love.

How can we come to understand how to give love if it was not our’s in the first place? If love is in fact from the God of Love, then we need to find it in this God Himself. We have to learn from Him, and we have to do our best to love as He does. After all, we cannot decide to buy a shirt if we have never seen it before. We cannot love if we have never really seen it before.

The People of God believe in a God of Love.

As a result, they should be the People of Love.

But we are not.

If the People of Love were to follow the One who came before them, then they would see that love calls for something far beyond our human comprehension.

Jesus Christ looked at the most hated members of society, and He loved them. Jesus Christ looked at the marginalized, and He welcomed them in. Jesus Christ did not remain quiet when the synagogue turned in to a market place, and He made it possible for any person to enter that space.

And they hated Him for it.

Jesus went against the norm, not fearing being made unclean, because He loved everyone He met.

And He died because of it.

How many of us would really allow ourselves to die for the sake of the most marginalized, most hateful, and most sickly souls? How many of us would be willing to die for the sake of justice? How many of us would allow the love in our hearts to go beyond our fears and bring joy to the hearts of all around us?

I know that I have failed to love in this way.

I fail every day.

The reason why so many souls cannot access love in its fullest is because the People of God do not act like they believe in the God of Love. We as a people make great claims to be kind, generous, and charitable, but instead we cling to rules, to distinctions, to misunderstanding. We choose to separate ourselves from the lost and lonely because we do not wish to make ourselves “unclean.”

I have known so many beautiful souls who were rejected from faith communities because of their past faults, because of their ideologies, because of who they believe they became.

But that’s not what Jesus does.

He does not reject any of us.

It is scary to believe that the God of Love would ever love us. Much like a man bending at the knee to ask his beloved to marry him, so too do we lower ourselves to ask for God’s love. If anything, we must fall to our lowest selves, to our greatest humility, and then we have the opportunity to ask Our Lord for His Heart.

He could not love us. If He is God, then we as humans are unworthy of that love.

Yes, it is true that we are unworthy of His love, but that is why the God of Love is greater than our Earthly loves. God’s love is unconditional, and it goes beyond comprehension. It accepts our very lowest selves, and it raises us up to be the people we are meant to be.

However, we must be willing to lower ourselves and encounter this One.

Then He may love us.

That is where many of the People of God stop. We “encounter” Christ, but then we say that there is no need for Earthly things anymore. We go away from the clubs, the degenerates, the injustices done on our brothers and sisters, and we ignore them. We ignore the little souls we encounter, solely because we do not want to be any smaller than we already are. We want to be “important” to God.

But if we do not give the love we received upon encountering Christ, then we will never know how beautiful it is on our hearts.

All we know is what we hear in stories, what we experience in the Sacraments, and in the hymns we sing.

To be loved is to love the loveless.

“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?

And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy

And, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them,

“Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.”

I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.”

~Matthew 15:4-7

We are all in need of love. However, those of us who are surrounded by love and acceptance often take for granted just how great this love can really be.

Think of this little sheep: it was probably scared. It was probably hungry. It was probably thirsty. Surely, the shepherd rejoiced, and we cannot focus on that, but let’s take a moment to think of how the little sheep must have responded to returning to its flock. That sheep must have eaten and drank more than ever before. That sheep must have rushed to its siblings and played more than ever before.

The sheep would have noticed the change in the flock.

And that would have made a huge difference in their lives, even if but for a moment.

There are so many souls that believe they are loveless. They believe that there is such a thing as love, but they do not know where to find it. They do not know that they can receive this love. All they know is that they are alone, that they are sad, and that they have been searching for something that seems unreal.

The shepherd sees this lost sheep, and He calls its name.

But the shepherd is far away, unseen by the world.

So He sends His people, the People of Love, to aid these little souls. His call is abnormal, and many of us are unwilling to accept this call.

Then He said to all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross” ~Luke 9:23

To love the loveless means that we have to be reminded of our own cross. We see the suffering, and we are reminded of how our own sins, our own struggles, our own heartbreaks hurt our hearts. We see the pain and ache and the sorrow. It is too much for us to bear, and so we run away from the little souls that God calls us to love.

However, if we draw near to these little souls, we can prop up their cross with our own.

And we can walk home with them.

Loving the loveless requires us to humble ourselves and recognize that no matter how much love we have in our lives that we are not perfect. We must empty ourselves of our pride and admit to our faults. Then, as we draw near to these souls through our littleness, we can look to the love of God.

We share our hearts with the broken-hearted, and they can see the God of Love within our hearts.

It will look different for every soul, but God will do great things through our little acts of love.

Remember the little sheep who returned to the flock? Remember how much of an impact that one soul had in the flock, even for a moment? Well, that is exactly how the souls we love back in to the fold respond.

When we give ourselves in love, it returns in a greater form.

I’ll give an example. There was a soul who believed in the God of Love, but they did not say ‘God.’ Instead, they said that they believed that love could be real, but perhaps the God who made that love would not give it to them. I watched as they wandered, desperately trying to give their love to someone, anyone, who would be willing to love them back.

They were alone, and they were tired from walking.

But they were not the kind of person I would ever associate myself with. If I were to love this soul, then I would be considered “unclean.” People in my faith community might judge me for spending time with this loveless soul.

Yet with every passing day, with every downcast gaze, my heart broke.

So I loved them. I loved them in my own little Felicity way. It was a mixture of prayers and intercessions from saints and smiles. It was a joke and a hug. It was a series of small acts that many would say were unnecessary. After all, these souls could never love a little girl like me. I was too innocent, too small, too “holy” to ever make an impact on their lives.

But with each passing day, each upward glance, each smile, I saw their hearts change.

Then there came a day where my heart was broken. I was lonely because I had gone against God’s call for me. Reading scripture made me weep. Mass was nearly unbearable. How could I possibly believe that what little love I had in my heart could really matter if I was so weak?

I walked past the soul with tears streaming down my face.

And they smiled at me.

Not just once, but every day following that day. It was a small act, yes, but it was the greatest act that they could perform for me. Love came in to their life, and although they had a long walk Home, they believed in the God of Love that was once merely a fantasy. They smiled at me, reminding me that we were walking together.

The love God gave me was given to this soul in humility, and it was returned to me in excess.

No longer do I fear losing my title, my esteem, my faith, my beauty for the sake of loving another soul.

So my Dear Readers, do not be afraid to lower yourselves for the sake of the souls around you. There are so many souls who believe that they are loveless. They are not loveless, but rather they are lovely. All they need is for us to empty ourselves for their sake.

Do not fear their response.

Do not fear rejection, because Christ was rejected. Do not fear division, because Christ stood in the midst of divisions. Do not fear death, because Christ was crucified.

Do not fear love, because Christ was resurrected.