Love Never Ends - Part 1

4/18/2013 , , , , , , , 0 Comments

I decided to title this post from the conclusion of St. Paul's well known passage about love from the first letter to the Corinthians (chapter 13) because, well, love never ends in the sense that it is really, really important (as you will see) and that it just keeps coming up again and again in my blog posts (and will continue to...)

Here's the back story:  Today we had a meeting of the sophomore service guys.  Basically, all the sophomores here at Brute (plus me because I'm a junior who is also a first year guys here - split the difference and I'm a sophomore...) are required to do 10 hours of service per month and every so often we get together and guys give short talks on how it has impacted their life.  You know, it sounds quite boring and then guys start talking and a bunch of great ideas and thoughts get brought to the surface and I'm like "wow!" that is a great thought.  Anyway, today we got onto the topic of love.  It is an obvious topic that one would talk about when on the subject of doing service for others, and very quickly it became evident that it was an important theme to every guy's reflection.  

Come Follow Me
The dilemma we found was reaching the point where you can help people through true Christ-like love, not requirement or something.  It's easy enough to do 10 hours of service when you have to, or when you enjoy doing that certain work, or when your schedule is open.  But what about the times went there is no requirement, or the type of service isn't your favorite, or you are busy?  It's tough to go pull weeds when you don't like hands-on labor.  It's tough to play Uno with handicapped people when you find it difficult to relate or converse with them.  It's tough to go baby-sit kids in a poor neighborhood when you have 3 tests, a paper, and a Frisbee game tomorrow.  Yet sometimes that is exactly what Christ calls us to do.  

I brought up the point that love needs to come from God, through us, to the world.  Prayer, Adoration, the Sacraments, Grace: it's all ways for us to grow deeper in our relationship with Christ, and thus, grow in our love for others.  The foundation for Christ-like love must be Christ because if we are trying to come at it from any other direction we are bound to fall short.  Seriously, we, as humans alone, just can't love like that.  Personally, I'm kinda selfish, and it's hard to give up time, or energy, or money, or whatever to help others (especially when I really want to help myself).  It's a constant area that I need to grow in, and I would guess that a few other people out there would agree.  It's one of those things that I need to remember to pray for; it's so obvious that I forget to pray for it.  I pray for health, and the weather, and good grades, and to be optimistic, and other such things, but I forget to pray for the important stuff - you know growing closer to Christ, love for others, deeper faith.  Ah, well, I'll keep trying...

Have a fantastic day folks!  (there will be more to come on this topic - get ready!)
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