God by keeping His commandments and doing good works.
Yet love of God is not all that is required of us. We must also love our neighbor, meaning everyone we meet — not only those who love us and do good to us. God asks us to love as He loves, and His love reaches out to everyone (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1825). We love our neighbor not because she is a likable person, because she is similar to us, or because we get along well with her. We love our neighbor because God loves our neighbor and calls us to do the same.
“Love, and love alone, is the heritage and heart, motive and mainspring in the life of the Church.”
— St. Francis de Sales
We are to be a channel, an instrument, of God’s love to every neighbor. If we love others with the love of God, we bless them with a supernatural love. The Holy Spirit can work through us to embrace them with the love of God.
Isn’t it impossible to love everybody? Yes, it’s impossible for human beings, but all things are possible with God. Living divine love, activating the gift of Baptism, requires effort on our part. Sometimes it’s not easy to love with God’s love; we have to work at it. After all, some of those people included in “everybody” are people we don’t particularly like — and perhaps even people whom we want to hate.
How do we love someone who has injured a member of our family? How do we love those who wish evil upon us? We do it only by God’s grace. Divine love does not rely upon our emotions. It involves an act of our will. We have to say: “Out of love of God, I choose to love this person.” That’s one kind of act of love.
Sometimes on the news we see victims of crime who have forgiven the criminals who caused them to suffer — wounded them, stole from them, slandered them, defrauded them. Non-believers cannot comprehend how such forgiveness is possible. The natural human instinct seems to be revenge. Yet that is why Christian love is so powerful — it is so radically opposed to our angry instincts that it must have its roots in God. Throughout history, unconditional Christian love has inspired the conversion of many, including onetime murderers, persecutors, and torturers.
“He who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”
— 1 John 4:16
We normally don’t wake up one day and perform some extraordinary act of love and sacrifice. We grow in love. Small acts of love open us to God’s grace and to greater acts of love. A smile, a helping hand, an encouraging word — all these activate God’s love in us. All these are acts of love.
If imitation is the greatest form of praise, then we truly praise God when we love as He would love. Jesus died for sinners — those who rejected Him. We lay down our lives so that the love of God may reach our neighbor.
Charity
Sometimes it’s prudent to abandon the use of an older term for one that’s more understandable to a new generation. For example, few people today use thee and thy in everyday speech and, accordingly, they substitute you and your in their prayers. But sometimes there is value in retaining an older word. There is a good argument for maintaining the traditional word charity rather than using the readily recognized word love. Ask people the meaning of love, and their working definition probably won’t mention God. Even dictionary definitions can fall far short of the Christian meaning.
So perhaps charity still serves us best. There is at least one dictionary’s definition of charity that includes “virtue” in one of the meanings: “The theological virtue defined as love directed first toward God but also toward oneself and one’s neighbors as objects of God’s love” (American Heritage Dictionary, 2015).
“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
— Luke 6:27-28 (NABRE)
Abide in Love
“Acts of love … are the fuel with which the fire of divine love is kept burning in our hearts.”
— St. Alphonsus Liguori
“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
— 1 John 4:20
“It’s impossible to measure the love of God: it is without measure! And so we become capable of loving even those who do not love us: and this is not easy.”
— Pope Francis
“Love consists not in the extent of our happiness, but in the firmness of our determination to try to please God in everything, and to endeavor in all possible ways not to offend Him, and to pray Him ever to advance the honor and glory of His Son and the growth of the Catholic Church.”
— St. Teresa of Ávila
“Man’s love for God owes its origin, growth, and perfection to God’s eternal love for man…. Everything we have is God’s gift to us — above all, the supernatural blessings of charity. If they are ours by gift, why boast about them?”
— St. Francis de Sales
[Our Lord said to His disciples,] “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you.”
— John 13:34
“No one should think that he observes this law [of charity] because he loves his neighbor. For he who loves others, but not for God’s sake, has not charity, even though he may think he has. True charity lies in loving our friend with and in God, and our enemy for God’s sake. He loves for God’s sake who loves even those by whom he is not loved.”
— Pope St. Gregory the Great
“Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest.”
— St. Augustine
8. How to Pray the Jesus Prayer
St. Paul tells us to “continue steadfastly in prayer” (Col 4:2; see 1 Thess 5:17) and to “be constant in prayer” (Rom 12:12). The Jesus Prayer is an ancient practice that aims to make prayer as regular and as constant as our breathing:
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God,
have mercy on me, a sinner.
This is the Jesus Prayer. It is intentionally short, so that it can be uttered in one breath, and can be uttered continuously, once with each breath. Its regular recitation ushers us into God’s presence.
A longstanding tradition in the Eastern Churches, the Jesus Prayer is also called the prayer of the heart. It provides a means of concentration, a point of focus for the inner life. Although the prayer is short, it is packed with meaning. It acknowledges Jesus as Lord, Savior, Messiah, God, and Son of the Father. It acknowledges that we stand as sinners before God, and that we seek His mercy.
A related Eastern tradition is the prayer of the name of Jesus. In biblical times, a person’s name had a sacred character. Note how often God changed people’s names based on the relationship they had with Him. Abram became Abraham; Jacob received the name Israel; and Saul, in the New Testament, became Paul.
God’s name was particularly sacred. God revealed himself to Moses as “I am.” As the names of the patriarchs revealed God’s relationship to them, so God’s name showed both His own nature and His relationship to the Israelites. “I am” was the one who lived eternally, and “I am” was the one relating to Moses and His people. God’s name was so revered that the devout Jew would neither write the name nor say it.
“Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if