What is a Relationship of Love?

Despite the songs, you can’t really love alone. It takes two. Or, really, it takes three.

Of all the people we meet, when we find the one we will marry, we know it. How? Why? Because God has planned it from the beginning. He is the reason we are able to love and marry. He gives us the gift of love for one special person.

But that kind of love is not the love that Jesus calls us to have. Even the pagans have that. We, as Christians, are called not to just love our neighbor, but to be in a relationship of love with our neighbor. How? Why?

Deacon Michael explains what that means.

Written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:

In a very real sense God has provided us with a self-definition.  He certainly has provided us with a definition of Jesus Christ.  And it is a very simple definition: love.  That's it.

And it makes it real easy.  Every morning I have to get up and try to figure out what I am going to say to you guys, and many times I don't succeed and I end up doing something and let the Holy Spirit tell me what to say.  But at the bottom of all of it, you can take virtually any reading, and I am saying virtually because it is early in the morning and I can't say “all”, I can give you a homily based on that reading, based on love.  That that in some way reflects love. 

And that is going to be a theme that we are going to see during this week. The monks in the dungeon of the Vatican are getting us ready for All Saints and All Souls Day: the Communion of Saints, the binding of the saints together in a communion of love, the binding of us through a relationship defined by love, and obviously the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son. And we deal with this in the first reading where St. Paul says, "Be imitators of God as beloved children and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God, a fragrant aroma."

There you go.  Imitate Christ.  But what does that mean?  In the reality, it's real easy to go, "Love."  The Beatles did it. They sang songs about “love, love, love.”  But what does it mean in our practical life?  What does it mean that we are called to do?  "Behave like God as His very dear children."  Behave like God?  What does it mean?  In the context of love, what does that mean?

First, it means that with regard to God, and with regard to each other, we are in a relationship.  Love is a word of relationship.  It is not a static word.  Love is not, "There's love.  Pffft. That's the end of it."  No.  It is a dynamic word that requires something.

First of all, it requires someone who is doing the loving.  And second, it requires an object of the love.  By God's definition, He loved us so much He gave us His only-begotten Son.  There is the loving, the object, and the action.  And we are called to love God in return.  Again, we are called to love God by following His teachings and believing in Him and everything that is entailed with loving God.  But we are also called to love each other, which puts us in a relationship with each other person in the entire world.  And it puts me in a relationship, a direct personal relationship, with each and every person in this room, and each and every person I will encounter in the remainder of my life, I am in a relationship.  A relationship defined by love.

And that relationship, we are called to place it as a precedent to overcome other things that are barriers.  We see it in the gospel reading.  This woman, Jesus can heal.  And they say, "But there is a barrier!  You can't do this on the Sabbath!  There is a barrier for Your loving this woman.  You can do it on any other day of the week.  Don't do it on the Sabbath!"  And Jesus says, "No!  There is no barrier to love that is justifiable."  There is no barrier to love that is justifiable.

And we are in a relationship with each and every person who is alive and who has died and is not in Hell.  This is the Communion of Saints.  And in a very real sense, Hell is… Dante's inferno is a wonderful thing to read, with the imagination that you can have of all these punishments in Hell.  But the bottom line is that Hell is taking you out of relationship with God and relationship with each other.  There is no longer a relationship defined by love.  When you are in Hell you have divided yourself from God and the Communion of Saints.  The Communion of Saints and God being defined by the relationship of love.  That is the horror of hell.

But it also is the wonder of what we are called to do, because in this relationship of love we find our salvation.  You say, "Well, how can I be good enough to go to heaven?"  Well, you can't.  God took care of that with love.  He gave His only-begotten Son.  But you can go and strive and do everything that you can, which is what St. Paul is talking about, and Jesus is talking about.  You can do everything that you can to live a relationship of love.

A relationship that, at the end of the gospel of Matthew, you know, you have heard me say that I just love that part, of the separating of the sheep and the goats.  The separating, the dividing relationship between those who spend all eternity with God in heaven in the relationship of love, is how, on this earth, we lived the commandment of love for everyone else.  The least among us, we are called to love.

And this is at the very core of what it is to be a Christian.  Listen to Pope Francis.  That is what he talks about with regard to mercy.  At the very core of our definition as Catholics is love.  Love for the members of the Communion of Saints.  That's why we pray for the dead.  It makes a difference.  We ask them to pray for us.  It makes a difference.  Because we are in this relationship that God has chosen to bring men into the relationship of love.  It is a relationship that continues and will continue for all eternity in heaven.

October 29, 2018 2