Love : Feeling or Decision?
6th Sunday of Easter
Two weeks ago, on April 16th, the student friars renewed our religious vow to live our lives in obedience, nothing of our own, and in chastity. The whole vow is quite long, but there is a line in it that is the most “challenging” for me to say. The line says: “I give myself to this fraternity with all my heart.”
In the past, I had struggles in my relationship with my friends and with other people in general, and this struggle is magnified as I live in the community with the friars because we almost spend all our days together, from praying, working, studying, playing, etc. In our interactions, I tend to be over-sensitive because I was afraid to be rejected in the community that I live together with. There are times when I misunderstood a lot of words and gestures by the brothers because of the fear of rejection.
It was only about 3 years ago that I came to realize that this struggle is rooted in my relationship with my dad. My dad and I used to be very close when I was very young, but our relationship changed in the last few years of his life. He had less and less time for me because he was under a lot of pressure when his business went to bankruptcy. When he finally passed away when I was 10 years old, subconsciously, I held that he stopped loving me and he left me.
I was stuck with this wrong belief for more than 20 years, and it haunted me in all my relationships. I did not realize that I am stuck with this belief that love is not forever. I was afraid to be close to anyone because there will be a time when that person will stop loving me.
Now in my community life…in your family life…we try our best to love one another. But sometimes we forget that each of us may have our own struggles…our own brokenness, because of what we experienced in the past. And when we carry this baggage in our relationship with our family, we may sometimes hurt one another unintentionally. And worse things may happen if we don’t realize that we are stuck and imprisoned by the brokenness that we have. And because we are stuck, there are times we may feel like giving up.
In the Gospel and 2nd reading today, Jesus asked us to “remain in My love and love one another as I love you." And the way Jesus loves us is to love to the point of laying down His life for us. All of us have heard this before, that God loves us. We are familiar with the story of His love…his passion, death, and resurrection. But sometimes we take it for granted. Sometimes we don’t realize that we have Him by our side.
The brokenness and the hurt that we experience in our lives may make us feel like giving up, but today Jesus is inviting us once again to come back to Him and remain in Him, because when we remain in Him, we can gain strength from Him.
He understands all the struggles that what we go through in our lives. He knows how it feels to be hurt and rejected. He knows what it means to be betrayed, and even to be killed by the people that He loves unconditionally. Jesus showed us, that love is not a mere feeling. He showed us in His suffering and crucifixion that Love is a DECISION that we make with our conscious mind.
If He wanted to, wouldn’t it have just been easier for Jesus to show His divine power to the people who persecuted Him? But it would not have accomplished what Jesus wants to show us what it means to love.
Love has a vision and purpose that is beyond the struggles of the present moment. In the midst of His suffering, Jesus gives us the example how to persevere in love. In the crucifixion we find that love can forgive and Love does not give up when the other rejected or left Him.
In the resurrection, we find that love conquers all fears and suffering. There is a victory when we give our lives for love.
Brothers and sisters… in this Easter season, let us encourage one another to always make the decision to love. In our struggles, let us always remember that we are not alone. As mentioned in the Gospel last week, our lives have been inserted into Jesus’ own life, He is the vine and we are the branches. Therefore, we are one with Him.
Let us spend sometime today or this week to reflect,
have I been a loving person so far?
Do I have any struggles that I am stuck with?
Because if I do, the next question will be:
have I been relying on Jesus
to give me strength to conquer this struggle?
As we approach the Pentecost that is coming soon, let us pray for one another that we will be blessed with the spirit of courage and the spirit strength to love one another with the same love that Christ has for each of us.
