What we are is more than what we do and far more than what we own. Many things that men call sins are not sins; they are feelings and lapses that will soon disappear.
Ephemeral.
That is a favourite argument of the New Testament. John does not say that the world is wrong; he says that ‘it passes away’.
There are many beautiful things in the world, important things that delight and absorb us, but they will not last. Everything in the kingdom of this world – pride and the pleasures of the eye and of the flesh – are here but for a moment.
Therefore, do not love the things of the world. Nothing that the world contains is worth the devotion and time of an immortal soul. The immortal soul should give itself to what is immortal.
And the only immortal things are: Faith, Hope and Love.
Some might say that two of those things also pass away: Faith, when we feel and experience the presence of God, and Hope, when our hopes are fulfilled.
What is certain, though, is that Love will last.
God, the Eternal God, is Love. Therefore seek out Love, that eternal moment, the only thing that will remain when the human race has reached the end of its days. Love will always be the only coinage accepted in the Universe when all the other coinages of all the nations have become useless and valueless.
If you choose to give yourself to many things, give yourself first to Love, and everything else will follow. Give to each thing its proper value.
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Give to each thing its proper value.
Let the great objective of your lives be to find to find sufficient strength to defend that idea and build a life with Love as its main reference point, as did Christ, who built his whole life around Love.
I said that Love is eternal. Have you ever noticed how often John associates Love with eternal life? When I was a child, I was not told that ‘God so loved the world that He gave his only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should have everlasting life.’
What I was told, I remember, was that God so loved the world that, if we trusted in Him, we would have peace, rest, joy and safety. I had to find out for myself that this wasn’t quite true, that all those who trust in Him – that is, all those who love Him, because trust is the only avenue to Love – would have eternal life.
The Gospels speak to us of a new life, therefore do not offer your fellow man only peace, rest, joy and safety. Instead, tell him how Christ came into the world to give us all a life abundant in Love, and therefore abundant in salvation, a life long enough for us to devote ourselves to learning to Love.
That is the only way that the words of the Gospel can make sense and touch body, soul and spirit, and give to each part a goal and an aim.
Many of the spiritual texts we read today are addressed only to one part of our nature.
They offer peace, but do not speak of life.
They discuss Faith and forget about Love.
They talk about justification, not regeneration.
And so we end up drifting away from the spiritual search, because it has failed to keep us on the path.
Let us not make that mistake. Let it be clear that for us only Total Love can compete with the love of the world.
To love abundantly is to live abundantly.
To love for ever is to live for ever. Eternal life is inextricably bound up with Love.
Why
do we want to live for ever? Because we hope that tomorrow will bring us someone we can love. Because we want to live another day with the person we love beside us. Because we want to find someone who deserves our Love and who, in turn, will know how to love us as we deserve to be loved.
That is why, when a man has no one to love him, he feels a great desire to die. As long as he has friends, people who love him and whom he loves too, he will live.
Because to live is to love.
Even love for an animal – a dog, for example – can justify the life of a human being. But if he loses that loving bond with life, any reason to go on living will disappear too.