Nuala O’Loan“we are made for love… we are made to love”, writes Nuala O’Loan
The great gift of Christmas is surely love, and love is the greatest gift which we can give. Sometimes in the bustle, the fun and the worry that can characterise our Christmas preparations we can forget that it is all really about love. That is ironic really, for the real fruit of that gift of love is peace, not worry and exhaustion!
The Christmas story tells us about the love of the young woman who gave birth to the child Jesus, about the love that made Joseph take his young wife and little baby and flee from the fear that the child would be harmed, like so many parents today who take their little ones on long, dangerous and sometimes even fatal journeys, in the hope of saving them from the terror that stalks the land of their birth.
The little boy Jesus grew into the precocious child who was able to engage with the priests in the temple at the age of 12, and who years later emerged from obscurity to go about his Father’s business. Three years later he lay dead in his tomb, so much loved, so much mourned by his bewildered followers.
Yet in his dying lay our redemption, in his pain we can find solace for our pain, and in his love for us ultimately we find our home, our peace and unexpected joy.
If we were to think about when we are truly at peace, it is when we know we are loved. The child lying in his mother’s arms sleeping has no fear. He is at peace.
The little child who runs off to play and tumbles, runs back to his mother and is cuddled and loved, and he stops crying and relaxes and is at peace. Sometimes as we grow older we may encounter difficulties, tragedies even, which rob us temporarily, or even for years, of our sense of peace, yet ultimately, I have discovered, peace returns, and when it returns, we know again, that despite all that has happened we are loved, loved by those we love, and loved and cherished by the good God who made us.
Deep within lies the knowledge that we are made for love, that we are made to love. As we learned in our catechism as little children, that we were made “to know God, to love him and to serve him in this world and to be happy with him for ever in the next”.
That love though is not a facile, easy thing. It demands of us. It demands selflessness and generosity, patience and humility, courage and tenacity. As we look on the world in which we live it would be quite easy to be tempted to think that we can do nothing to remedy the evils of the world.
Refugees
The refugees on their perilous journeys from Syria and Afghanistan and the other states of terror can seem to be a problem for world governments to solve. The starving children of the world are a problem for the aid agencies, the mentally ill and the lost who end up sleeping on our streets a problem for housing charities.
The unemployment that robs our people of hope and dignity is something we cannot solve.
To a degree that is true. Yet, there are things we can do. Each of us can decide we will make a difference, that we will use the energy of the love in our hearts for those we encounter on our journey every day. It is, perhaps, an easy decision to make. It is much harder daily to live the decision to really love.
We are now at the beginning of the Year of Mercy. Pope Francis said that “the time has come for the Church to take up the joyful call to mercy once more”.
“It is time to return to the basics and to bear the weaknesses and struggles of our brothers and sisters. Mercy is the force that reawakens us to new life and instils in us the courage to look to the future with hope.”
We are called to two things: firstly “to a true moment of encounter with the mercy of God” as Pope Francis said, calling us to take courage and enter into that encounter knowing that we will be forgiven for all our wrongdoing, and then reminding us of the words of Jesus “judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back”.
Pope Francis calls on us to rediscover the corporal works of mercy “to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead”.
And, he reminds us, “let us not forget the spiritual works of mercy: to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offences, bear patiently those who do us ill, and pray for the living and the dead.”
I had actually forgotten those words, “the works of mercy”. Our parish priest reminded us of them a couple of months ago in a homily in preparation for the Year of Mercy. He asked us how many of them we were doing!
We don’t even have to ask ourselves how to ‘do’ mercy. It is all spelled out for us.
The challenge may be to find the time and the energy to do it all. It sometimes seems to me that situations present in our daily lives demanding that we respond, and we must make a decision, whether to act as best we can with compassion like the Good Samaritan, or whether we walk by on the other side.
It can be disconcerting to try to counsel the doubtful, comfort the afflicted etc. Yet I have learned that the Holy Spirit is with us in those moments, guiding and enabling. We do not do these things alone. We do them through and in the Love that gives us life.
So, as we run round stuffing turkeys and wrapping presents, at least we won’t have to think too much about good New Year resolutions.
There is plenty for us to be so grateful for in the love that is the essence of Christmas. Our challenge surely is to make sure we live that love.