True Love: nice quotes vs. real action

Love for souls sounds theoretical, vague, and ambiguous. But we’re talking about authentic Christian love, charity. We don’t just love on a human level, but we love others as spiritual and eternal persons, images of God himself. “God created man in the image of himself, in the image of God he created him” (Gn 1:27). 

The example that the Holy Father gives at the beginning of the Year of Faith is that of the Samaritan woman at the well. She asks Christ for water, but he goes far beyond her physical needs and loves her more deeply. “If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me something to drink,’ you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water” (Jn 4:10). He recognizes her real thirst and tries to quench it.

This is one of things that impressed me when I joined the Regnum Christi Movement. We have a custom of praying for all of those souls entrusted to our care. In other words, as members and potential members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we are joined in a very real way to all other members throughout the world. In God’s infinite Providence, he linked the good and even eternal destiny of others to me, my actions, my words, my prayers, and my love. What better intention than to pray for my brothers and sisters who depend in some way on me as an instrument of God’s grace.

So in some way, I’ve been praying for all of you for the past 15 years (Mom and Dad, don’t worry, I started praying for you earlier). God has wanted to link all of us in his History of Salvation, and I thank God daily for your prayers and support. There is no way I could have been faithful without your outpouring of support, and I hope to be able to repay it in some way through my priesthood, remembering you in my daily Mass. What a mystery – why has God given such a great mission and responsibility to poor, weak men.

Walking the streets of Assisi, this becomes so clear through the examples of men like Francis. If it wasn’t for him, where would the Church be? It was he and his brothers that tirelessly walked the roads of Christendom preaching the radicalism of the Gospel and calling people to conversion and Christian charity. The Franciscans, their hospitals, schools, monasteries, and the monuments of Christian service can be traced to this simple friar who gave away everything even to the cloak on his back and the shoes on his feet to help his brothers.

Today we stand in the same place where Francis renounced everything, even his family, to live in poverty, chastity, and obedience for Christ and his brothers. As he, himself, said, “For it is in giving that we receive.”

On our pilgrimage, we experience this reality in a very real, even if sometimes uncomfortable way. Loving others and especially in a spiritual way is not always easy or fun. It will call us out of our comfort zone. How interested are we that the one at our side goes to heaven? This requires prayer, patience, effort, and above all a truly generous love.

Okay we don’t really have the chance to lay all we have, even the clothes on our back, like St. Francis, at the foot of Christ. Nor can we rebuild a church. But we can lay aside our likes and preferences to make those around us happy. We can rebuild Christ’s dwelling in our hearts by talking to him in silence and prayer.