What True Love for God Involves

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

AGAIN, Christ himself tells us very clearly what true love for him involves or, shall we say, requires. “He that has my commandments, and keeps them, he it is that loves me,” he said. “And he that loves me, shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” (Jn 14,21)

If we would just meditate on these words a little, we can readily understand that God’s commandments, as revealed to us in full by Christ, would give us the full picture of the reality we are in, a reality that is not only natural, but also spiritual and supernatural. The commandments of God, who is love, would only lead us to true love as it is through these commandments that Christ will manifest himself to us.

It is important that we meditate on these words of Christ very closely if only to understand the relation of how love of Christ is achieved by keeping his commandments and how that love can lead us to the truth that nowadays is being twisted and distorted according to one’s whims and caprices, one’s biases and prejudices, creating all sorts of spins and narratives to suit one’s interest at the expense of truth itself.

This distortion of truth is most especially noticed nowadays in the fields of politics, journalism, and even in the sciences, philosophies and ideologies. Even open, unmitigated lies are peddled, and done with so much self-confidence and aplomb that it would seem that the devil, the father of lies, is having a heyday.

This will obviously require a strong faith for us to believe in these words. But if we would just be humble enough and acknowledge our total dependence on God, we would have no problem to accept these words even if they sound to be incredible to us.

God’s commandments would bring us to another and higher level of how to understand things in general. In fact, they would actually bring us to another and higher level of life, that of God himself, since that is what is meant for us.

We have to be wary of our strong tendency to keep only to our human and worldly way of understanding things. Our so-called rule of law, for example, cannot fathom the wisdom behind Christ’s clear injunction to love our enemies. It is trapped in a purely retributive kind of justice, hardly paying attention to the need for restorative and reformative justice.

And why does Christ command us to love even our enemies? The simple reason is that no matter how other people are, the fact remains that we are all children of God, brothers and sisters of each other, and bound to love each other.

While the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and sin will always be maintained, and acted on accordingly, we should never forget that in the end we are meant to love everyone.

Yes, we are meant for loving. That’s what would actually bring us to the fullness of our humanity. That’s what would make us God’s image and likeness as he wants us to be. That’s why loving God and everybody else in the way God loves everyone, is the greatest and the second greatest commandments God has for us.

We really need to train ourselves and all our faculties to follow what Christ is telling us very clearly. This will require tremendous effort, of course. But if we would just persist in going through this training, time will come when this true love that channels the very love of God in us would become second nature to us.

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com