I Need Love

This past weekend I suddenly realized how much help I need to love my neighbor. Despite the urges I felt to do some things, and despite the will I had to do them, I wondered: Did I have pride in thinking I actually knew how to do them? Did I have pride in thinking I COULD do them – alone? Love is what WE are all made for. It’s a commandment: To love our neighbor, but sometimes I perhaps think I see it as my obligation alone. But no task, no commandment is mine alone; the bigger the task I see, the more I need God and my neighbor, not to do things with or for me, but to help me to do things with more love.

Big things need to be done with more love, or else the person helped, the little individual man, won’t feel love flow onto himself. He’ll see the benefit he receives not as a loving gift from God, but some obligation of those providing the gift. A huge soup kitchen can help many people; someone I feed in my kitchen feels loved. That is more important than the food. That is why giving to a charity is a good thing, but being charitable is better.

I need to get and feel loved, not to keep it, but to give it away. The more I seek to help my neighbor with good things, the more I need love, love that I can give to them, to make the things provided be of real value to them --- to make their life better.