I (Teresa) wanted to share a few reflections on love in our broken world. These reflections are very much based on religious beliefs, so you can decide if you’re interested in reading further. This past Monday (9/15) was the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, and I dedicate these words to her.
We are called to love. Not a simplistic, cliché “all we need is love” love (no offense to the Beatles), but a challenging, authentic love that will transform us and allow us to bring God’s love into the world.
To put this in no uncertain terms of our current political situation, I say with conviction: God loves Tyler Robinson. God loves Charlie Kirk. God loves Trump. God loves Biden and Harris. God loves x politician/social figure/difficult person in my life. Some of those statements are definitely easier for me to believe than others, yet we are all God’s beloved children, and God has created us all for good. Do we, can we, believe this? It breaks God’s heart to see us murdering our brothers and sisters, whether literally or figuratively with the slightest movement of our heart. God calls all of us to a more complete embodiment of love, even as He loves us and others in our brokenness and lack of love toward one another.
Which people do I struggle to love?
Whoever it is at any given moment, I have found it helpful to meditate on how deeply and fully God loves that person, setting aside from my thoughts any of their harmful beliefs/actions, for God loves us and others independent of our sinfulness (Rom 5:8). I ask to love them too, not in a self-righteous “look at me taking the high road” way, but in an authentic, humble way, with sorrow and repentance for my failure to love as God does. We were created in love and for love, for love of God and love of neighbor. God is love (1 Jn 4:8), and our union with Him, as well as our solidarity with one another, depends on the extent to which we enter into this love.
I find that trying to love certain people with authentic, whole-hearted love, empty of self-righteousness, is very challenging. Yet, in my experience, this type of prayer gradually softens our hearts. It makes our hearts more like Jesus’s own Sacred Heart, as offered on the cross with an outpouring of forgiveness and mercy for all. We are called to be merciful, to bring good into the world (Lk 6:35-38; Col 3:8, 12-15; Rom 12:21). This prayer is an opportunity to offer to God those parts of our heart that are hardened against our brothers and sisters, those parts that struggle to love certain people—and we surely have good, legitimate reasons for this struggle. Yet, God calls us to more. Our world clearly needs more.
This attitude, this way of being, doesn’t mean we stop advocating for the policies in which we believe or that we minimize the importance of social change, but it does help us, in our activism and all aspects of daily life, to relate to one another in a way that is truly loving, brotherly, and reflective of the society that we would like to build.
Peace to you and to our world. Thank you for reading.