Blog # 226 LOVE IS A DECISION - 2

Blog # 226 LOVE IS A DECISION - 2 Times may come when we are called upon to love when warm feelings are not present. We must simply decide to love, to love because we want to love rather than because we feel like loving. This is true with regard to our love for God as well as our love for wife or husband, friend or neighbor. It is especially true with regard to the command of Jesus in the Bible that we love our enemies. Certainly that love is a decision ! In describing the experience of love some people might substitute the word feeling for decision. Love is a feeling. Others might substitute the word generosity. Love is generosity. This would certainly be a part of it in that to love means to give and the more we love the more we give. However, it would not necessarily be true that the man who gives his wife a new expensive automobile loves her more than or as much as the man who says to his wife after an argument, "Honey, I am sorry." Though one gift cost more than the second it does not cost the man as much of his heart, where love resides. When Jesus praised the widow who put the small coins into the temple treasury He knew full well the coins were not worth very much. His praise for her was rather that she gave all she had, she gave her heart. Love is a decision. Whether we feel like it or not, whether we have much or little to give we can decide to love. What a difference it would make if people could understand and apply this principle in their relationships with one another. I love you means I have decided to love you whether I feel like loving you or not. I love you even when I do not agree with you. I love you even though you have hurt me. I love you even though I do not have much to give. In this light how beautiful and meaningful is the famous little song of commitment we sing: " I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back. Though none go with me, I have decided". I love you, anyone who happens to be reading this blog, right now , whoever you are. I must, if I want to be a Christian. The love I have for you is not yet complete. It is more like a 'seed' of love. I love you as a unique individual among more than seven billion people living on earth right now. The bottom line is I love you as a fellow human creature of an All-loving God. Most of you I will never meet face to face nor will I ever this side of Heaven know your name. But I love you anyway because I do know you are real. I find you and know you in knowing myself, and love you in the hope given me in the 'love seed' that God has planted in my heart by the grace of the Holy Spirit dwelling in all of us who share by faith the love of Jesus for all of us . How fitting, meaningful, and precious is the Act of Faith I make each morning as I go out the back door of my house on my way over to church to think and pray and offer Mass: O, My God, I love You with all my heart. I love my neighbor as myself for love of Thee. I forgive all who have injured me and ask pardon of all whom I have injured. Amen.