Living Down In The Dirt

Love?

Love is a hard word.

Even now. Perhaps especially now.

Love God with the complete fullness of my being? Love my neighbor with the complete fullness of my being?

How dare I say that I do when I know that I do not, when I know that there is yet much of me left to be converted? To say that I do would be the ultimate hypocrisy.

God calls us to live, move, and have our being in himself ... whose nature is love. What stands in the way of this love?

Pride. Arrogance. Selfishness.

Oh my.

I am yet such a great sinner.

People, in general, no longer choose love. They choose, rather, what they make as a definition of love that suits their notions and preferences. Things get convoluted with this approach. The more convoluted things become, the more sore and angrier people become. Hence the problems that plague society. Hence the interpersonal wars that rage.

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. [James 4:1-2]

In the end, the only thing that is left is charity. In the now, we have 1 Corinthians 13 as a tool to measure the quality of our charity.

I keep reminding myself that in this life real, lasting, and meaningful change rarely happens from the top down. It happens down in the dirt where the roots are. I am choosing to live down in the dirt. Saint Benedict tells me that I am to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.[1] [Holy Rule 4:21.]

The love of Christ must become before all else.

[1] HR 4:21