Saint Joseph Roman Catholic Parish issued the following announcement on Oct. 25

LOVE is at the center of Christian Living. In today’s Gospel reading, when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, his answer was: “You shall love your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt. 22: 37- 39)

I now propose that we bring back the active meaning of Love. Let love be an act. The act of loving needs effort, concentration, time and prioritization. Love doesn’t just happen to us as in “falling in love”: love is a choice we make. It is something we will ourselves to do. Love by its very nature is directed to someone else’s well-being. As Yahweh reminds the Israelites in the First Reading, “You shall not oppress or inflict a resident alien… You shall not wrong any widow or orphan” (Ex. 22: 20-21).

LOVE is also directed toward God. To love God with our whole being means to make God the center of our life: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt. 22:37). We constantly think of God; we put God in the center of our plans and decision making; we ask ourselves if what we have done or about to do is in accord with the mind and heart of God. We wonder: would it be pleasing to God?

Once God is at the center of our life, the second commandment is easier to follow, to love our neighbor. Notice the description of Jesus, “The second is like {the first}.” He likens the love of neighbor to the love of God. The two are inseparable. As the great apostle of love, St. John said: “No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us” (I Jn. 4:12).

LOVE is an act of the will. Like any act that we have to learn, it might be difficult in the beginning, just as a baby finds it difficult to walk at first. But when one does it often enough, it becomes a habit. It becomes easier to love. To love somebody who is lovable is easy to do, just like it is easy for a child to eat candies. To love somebody who is unlovable or an enemy, is difficult. It is like the child who finds it hard to eat vegetables. One therefore has to learn how to love. They whom we call saints are people who have learned the art of loving. They love not just the lovable but even the unlovable, the unloved, and the unloving. Thus, LOVE IS MORE THAN JUST A FEELING!

Action starter: Willpower may not be enough. Ask for God’s grace to help you love someone difficult to love.

#48. A STORY OF THE WISDOM OF THE WORLD: LOVE… Once upon a time, an intelligent young king ordered all the learned professors of his kingdom to gather and write down all the wisdom of the world. After 40 years of work, they had a thousand books packed with wisdom. The king, in the meantime reached 60 years of age, told them, “I cannot read all those books, reduce all that wisdom to basics. After ten years of work, they reduced the world’s wisdom to a hundred volumes. “That’s still too much,” said the king. “I am already 70 yrs. Condense all that wisdom into absolute essentials.”

So the wise men tried again and squeezed all the world’s wisdom into just one book. But by that time the king was lying on his deathbed. So the leader of the committee of the wise men was asked to do just one sentence for all the wisdom of the world. And this was read at the royal room of the king before he died. This one sentence was: “PEOPLE live, they suffer, and they die, the only thing that outlives them is LOVE.”

THE ONLY THING THAT OUTLIVES IS … LOVE! And that’s why it is the greatest of all commands.

Original source can be found here.