Faith

Make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love." (2 Peter 1:5-7)

St. Peter in his short 2nd letter reminds us how God has given us everything needed for life and godliness. For all who say they have faith use St. Peter's checklist above to see how well you support and nourish your faith life. Taking these steps of goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness and mutual affection leads us to the landing of the most important one and that is love.

They were wrong when they said, "All roads lead to Rome," for all roads lead to love.

Charity with love

"You impose on people burdens hard to carry,
but you yourselves do not lift one finger to touch them."  ~ Luke 11:46

They neglect to show charity especially to the weak and poor.

They go through the correct motions of conventional religion while forgetting the realities.

"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."
~ 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in”  ~ Abraham Lincoln       

To Love Is To Give

Love is principally a serious commitment of obedience to God’s will.

We need to have a relationship with God because we love Him, not because of what we can gain but because we want to do His will strictly to make Him happy….without expecting any form of gratification

The absolute measurement of love is in giving. In the Gospel the verb to love is always associated with the verb to give (there’s no greater love than to give one’s life); to give food, clothing, to give of your time, your life, everything, because the only measurement of love is to love without measuring what you get in return.

For Jesus, to love means to give one’s life for your friend. For Jesus, your friend means all, even those that we don’t know, that are not friendly to us, even those who are trying to crucify us.

The love that Jesus demands of us is the one demonstrated by the good Samaritan, who saw, dared to get close and had compassion; one who immediately intervened to clean and bandage the wounds, who put him on a donkey to take him to get medical attention and who stayed with him until the following day; one who cared enough to make sure to complete the solution to the problem.

This is what Jesus commands of us with ALL, EVERY day.

Can we honestly say that love exists among the people who pray, who go to Mass and who do other good works? Once upon a time observers of Christians would say, “Look how they love each other?” Do these observers say the same of us today? Today we are defined as “Those who go to Mass.”

If we were to take Jesus’ commandment seriously, to be defined as such wouldn’t be a fitting model for Christians.

We need to return where we can be identified as, “Look how they love each other.” Only then will Jesus’ joy be in us fully. The one who loves sows the seeds of joy with his hands, wipes away tears and frees the oppressed, giving a family to those who don’t have one. That’s when we will have true faith.