God’ Gift of Love

This week, as God’s people have for 2,000 years, we celebrate the birth of Jesus. We celebrate the fact that when that child was born in Bethlehem of Judea, the whole course of human history was changed. That is a fact as hard and blunt as any fact. Art, music, literature, our culture itself, our political institutions, our whole understanding of ourselves and our world — all changed. It is impossible to know how differently world history would have developed had that child not been born, but of one thing I am certain. Had the light of God’s love not shone into the darkness of our world on that long-ago night, we would still be lost in our sin, lost and still waiting for our redemption.

But thanks be to God! That child was born, bringing the love of God to life in an incredible new way and making possible not just a new way of understanding life and our role in creation, but also a new way of living life in relationship to God! Jesus was the gift of God’s love to us, making the depth of God’s love real and tangible. In the gift of Jesus, God shows us just how accepted, loved, forgiven and liberated from sin and death we are. As brothers and sisters of Jesus, marked as His own in baptism, we are not mere creatures, but children of the living God who claims us and loves us as His own offspring.

Such love for us deserves our full gratitude. But how? How can we repay God for such incredible generosity? Listen to the words of St. John of the Cross, a spiritual master who lived in the 16th century and wrote beautifully about God’s love. In his meditation on the depth of God’s love, he offered this remarkable insight: “Love can be repaid by love alone.”

The only way we can repay God for His love is to follow Jesus’ command to love one another as He loves us and to do for others as we would have them do for us. In other words, to live in such a way that our lives are a living witness to our love and gratitude to God.

Prayer:

O God, who hast taught us to keep all thy commandments by loving thee and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that we may both be devoted to thee with our whole heart, and united to each other with pure affection; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.^[1]

[1] (Leonine Sacramentary) from "Prayers for Every Occasion," Edited by Frank Colquhoun, Morehouse-Barlow Co., New York, NY, p. 372