“Do I Really Love My Dog”

“Oh, I love White Castle Hamburgers …they are so delicious …. those onions, the soft buns, the pickle and ketchup…mmmmmmm!  Well Dave that’s great for you, but I really love my dog Ollie… he is so wonderful and fuzzy…he’s my best friend. Well Teddy I love the Jersey Shore….”.  Hmmmmmm.

Love has become a very common word today….easily losing its real meaning. When we love everything, we can tend to not truly love anything. This can cause us to underestimate the magnificence of authentic love and especially of God’s love. 

Pope Francis reminds us about God’s love, saying “God always loves us with a greater love than we have for ourselves. This is his secret for entering our hearts… God knows that we become better only by accepting his unfailing love, an unchanging love that changes us. Only the love of Jesus can transform our life, heal our deepest hurts, and set us free from the vicious circles of disappointment, anger, and constant complaint.”  We need to be filled with his free, unfailing, and concrete love…..” (Pope Francis Homily, Dec. 24, 2020, Vatican Basilica) 

So how do we get transformed and healed and set free from our worst disappointments and hurts and complaints? We need to allow the Lord to love us,  especially in our worst moments. The lover doesn’t love based on the condition of the one being loved; he loves because he is filled with love. God is love. He doesn’t wait for us to get our act together and then love us… it’s his love that enables us to get our act together. Sounds simple, but often we don’t understand. 

At best, we really only partially understand. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” (1Cor. 13:12) As we allow God’s love to transform us, we will begin to understand more and more the magnificence of God’s love. It’s pretty cool. No, actually its VERY COOL.  

So it’s okay to LIKE White Castles and our dog and the Scottish Highlands, but we really need to focus on being LOVED by God and then LOVING God and our brothers & sisters. And as we allow this great dynamic of heaven to begin working, all will be well with our soul, and that is very good news.