LOVING AS OUR TRUEST IDENTITY
One of the reasons why some people dislike any kind of organized religion is
because there are so many rules, commandments to follow. Why can’t I just live my life according to my own design? Why should I be part of something that seems to dictate the way I need to live my life?
For us Catholics, we don’t see commandments as a set of rules coming from the outside; we don’t consider them as an imposition of a sovereign authority over a subject, but rather, the commandments emanate or spring forth from within, from our very essence as created in the image and likeness of God. How so? I’ve already explained this so many times but, for the sake of the Gospel today, it bears repeating. We begin with the
fundamental statement: God is Love; the second statement is: the human person is created in the image and likeness of God, who is Love. Therefore, the human person is love – with a small “l”.
Now, if love is our basic identity and essence, the commandments of Jesus to love God above all things and to love our neighbor as ourselves are just deeper articulations or reflections of who we are. Meaning, there’s no other way to be true to who we are except to love because that’s our very own composition; to do the opposite is to deny our very being. If we see and understand it this way, then the commandment of love takes a different form. It’s not a “command” coming from the outside, but simply an exhortation to be true to who we are, to be true to our essence.
To go against love then is to go against our very own nature, and to go against our nature is violence, is a lie, is to be phony, is self-destruction. How true are you then to yourself? If you want to know how true you are, then evaluate how you love. ~ Fr. Cary