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The ability to enjoy life and the ability to love are closely connected. For our God is both the God of love and the God of the living. He has made us to live—on earth and in heaven, before and after death, now and forever.
By “enjoying life,” I do not mean “having a good time.” I mean the ability to respond to beauty and to goodness. I mean the capacity for wonder, amazement, and delight. I mean the openness to be healed of life’s daily wounds by a kind word, a flower, a joke.
All things and all people come from the loving hand of inexhaustible Creativity; all reveal the Master’s touch. God, who loves us so much, wills that everything and especially every person bring us joy and liberate the life that is in us. He wills that persons and things lead us out of the desert of self.
Life is in us—a huge reservoir of strength and joy, given us by our Father. Furthermore, through our baptism, this life became a share in his own infinite joy, strength, and love. Through our baptism, we have been set on the path of life and love.
We are not only called to seek after moral justice or to try to “do the proper thing.” We are called to life and love.
We are called to open our eyes, our hearts, and our minds to reality. We are called to respond to all that is, simply because it is. It is through this responding in love to all that God has made that we become alive.
And it is as we respond to the things around us that we learn to respond to the Word of God and to the sacraments. Thus we gradually become people in whom the natural and the supernatural are so enmeshed as to be indistinguishable—the persons God intended us to be.
It is our enemy, the devil, who brings us boredom, discouragement, despair. He is the thief who tries to rob us of love, of joy, of hope, and of life.
But Christ is with us. He has conquered boredom, discouragement, and despair. He said, I have come that they might have life, and have it to the full (Jn 10:10).
And how does he bring us life and hope and joy? He does this by each thing that exists. A single blade of grass contains within itself the science of botany and the secret of life and proclaims the glory of God.
He does it by Sacred Scriptures, which is his living, healing, consoling word. He does it by the sacraments, especially the Eucharist.
Even more, he does it by every act of love manifested by another person. How great is our need for love, understanding, and patience! And since our need is so great, so is everyone else’s.
It is by love that we can free one another¾that we can liberate in one another the life that is within.
We have been consecrated to love, empowered to love, and commanded to love. Love one another as I have loved you (Jn 15:12). What tremendous power we have been given!
Let no one say, “I am not needed. I am unimportant.” That is a denial of God’s work and plan. Let no one be indifferent to or fail to have mercy on another person.
It is a fantastic thought that, at every moment, I can accept or condemn, build up or put down. At any moment, I can in some way bring life or death to another person.
Blessed are those who try to live and love daily!
Adapted from The Power of Love, (1990), MH Publications, pp. 129-132, out of print.
