To be loved forever  

We often teach ourselves and others: “To love and be loved.” In other words, if we learn to love others, we will be loved in return. The initiative should come from us, and as a consequence, we will receive the reward of being loved. Thus, in instances when our love is ignored or rejected, we end up feeling empty and unloved.

“To be loved and to love.” This is more of what Jesus taught and lived by. As the well-known spiritual writer, Fr. Albert Nolan, explains it: “In Jesus’ understanding, loving God was a grateful and joyful response to God’s unconditional love….This is proclaimed in no uncertain terms in the First Letter of John: ‘We love because God first loved us’ (1 Jn. 4:19). In practice, many Christians see it the other way around: That we first make a giant effort to obey the commandment to love God, and when, with God’s grace, we succeed, God responds by loving us. For Jesus, however, God’s love comes first.” (A. Nolan, Jesus Today)

How many of us have allowed ourselves to really be habitually aware in our hearts of God’s unconditional love for us, feel it deeply, in joy or in pain, in success or in failure, anywhere and everywhere? Easier said than done! It is easy enough to accept God’s love in our minds, but to personally experience it in our hearts and souls is something else. This is no less than a mystical experience, as a result of inner surrender to God’s constant presence within us and all around us.

This experience of God’s unconditional love for us is what moves us to love in return. To be loved and to love. This is what the human Christ incarnated in his own person – the real meaning of human life – and shared it with us all. Not only in his day‑to‑day life, but in his teachings as well, like the unforgettable Parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15: 11-32). If a father can be as loving and forgiving as that one, how much more is our ever-loving and ever-forgiving God to each one of us. So that when we love God and others as our response to God’s loving us first, it does not really matter if those others love us back in return or not. For as long as we continue to experience God’s unconditional love for us, life’s meaning goes on. In fact, life continues even in death!

This is the meaning of today’s Gospel message: “That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called ‘Lord’ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive” (Lk. 20: 37-38).

God loves us with God’s unconditional and eternal love. How then can He allow us to perish into nothingness? Never! “For you love all things that are, and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned. And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you? But you spare all things, because they are yours, O Lord and lover of souls, for your imperishable spirit is in all things” (Wis. 11: 24-26, 12: 1).

So death is part of life. Life is God’s love, and God’s love is eternal. And I am part of God’s love. In death, “life is changed, not ended,” as our ritual for the dead so rightly puts it. Having tasted the beauty and the bounty of creation, imperfect as it is, how much more beautiful and bountiful the next creation must be. “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2: 9).

Such is God’s endless love for us all, which moves us to love Him in return, and to love all that He loves. For the rest of our lives, then, let us prepare for our death, rather than be afraid of it. How?

“Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me….Amen I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did it for me” (Mt. 25: 34-36, 40).