St. Anthony the Abbot Catholic Church

How can we measure how much we love God? How can we know? We all love God to some extent - otherwise we wouldn't be here right now. But how much? How mature is our love for God?

 

St. Teresa of Avila, the amazing reformer and Doctor of the Church from sixteenth-century Spain, took her measuring stick from this Gospel passage about the greatest Commandment. She wrote:

 

"We cannot know whether or not we love God, although there are strong indications for recognizing that we do love Him; but we can know whether we love our neighbor. And be certain that the more advanced you see you are in love for your neighbor, the more advanced you will be in the love of God; [and] to repay us for our love of neighbor, He will in a thousand ways increase the love we have for Him."

 

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta shows the same kind of common sense:

 

“We are commanded to love God and our neighbor equally, on the same level. There is no difference. Love for our neighbor must be equal to our love for God. We don’t have to search for opportunities; we have them twenty-four hours a day with those around us. How is it that we do not see and we miss these opportunities?”

 

When we obey God's command to love our neighbors, in little things or in big things, we actually increase the intensity of God's presence in the world - because we reveal His love to others.

 

Allen Hunt, a former Methodist minister who ran a huge mega-Church in Georgia and hosted one of the most popular radio talk shows in the south, left everything to become a Catholic. Here is his description of how the simple but sincere Christ-like love of a Catholic priest - a fellow student at Yale Divinity School - opened his heart to God in new ways, and became the vehicle by which God brought him into the Catholic Church.

 

"Afer completing seminary at Emory University in Atlanta, my family and I moved to New Haven Connecticut, for me to pursue a PhD in New Testament and Ancient Christian Origins at Yale University. Of the four students admitted to the highly selective degree program that year, one was a Presbyterian, one a Jesuit, one a Dominican, and of course, I was a Methodist. Much to my surprise, the Dominican friar, Fr. Steven, and I immediately became close friends upon meeting in our first week. Fr. Steven fascinated me. I had never spent more than five minutes with a priest in my life. He slowly opened all the doors to the Catholic Church for me. Up to that point, I really had no exposure to the Church, but when it came, it came like water from a fire hydrant... I do not think Fr. Steven intended to lead me home [into the Catholic Church]. Rather, he loved me and my family with abundance in a time when we desperately needed it...”

 

Through experiencing Christ-like love from a true Christian, this man discovered in a brand new way the depths of God’s love for him, and it changed the whole course of his life.

 

Loving God and neighbor are the great commandments - they are the path to true happiness and fullness of life. All of us here today love God, and we love our neighbor. But our love is still immature. It has room to grow; it can become stronger. And as it gets stronger, so will the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit at work in our own souls. And that's what we are all hoping for.

 

So what can we do to strengthen our love for God, to make it grow? Like all virtues, the virtue of love grows with exercise. This week, let's go the spiritual gym; let's exercise our love for God and neighbor. We don't have to do anything crazy - just something, just something intentional.

 

Don't let a day go by without consciously, intentionally exercising your love for God and neighbor - the love God himself has planted in your heart. Because if we exercise it, it will grow, and when love grows, so does everything else that is good.