Mother Teresa: love personified

Tweaking love . . . or can you?

Love is not a commodity that can be bartered or sold to the highest bidder. Love comes free, or love does not come at all. Love is not coy, nor flirty. Love is never earned. In a word, you simply cannot quantify love. You cannot package it up, tie a bow around it and give it away, either. To think that way simply means one does not understand the true nature of love. Love is never something, but rather someone. Thus, the highest form of love is God. To know God is to know love.

Love is without fault; therefore, you can never judge love. True love is flawless. Love knows no language; yet, it is known by all. A Frenchman does not have a corner on the language of love, any more than an African Hottentot. There’s nothing erotic about love, either. Love has no gender, age or level of intelligence. Some of the most loving people on earth have Downs’s syndrome; yet they are full of love.

True love doesn’t come naturally, either; unless you are in love with God. Then, and only then does it become selfless and purposeful. Thus, love never ask, ‘What can I get?’ but rather, ‘What can I give?’

Jesus gave his all. Yet, few of us have that courage. Why is that? Now, do you want the truth? If so, here it is— it is because few of us are that committed.

I find it curiously interesting that the disciple who met Christ on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) did not recognize him until he broke bread with them. Scripture does not tell us why that was so, but the scene suggest that they must have put it all together once they had taken a good look at his hands and his nail scared wrist. Something must have clicked at that moment. It was their ‘aha’ moment. Words were not necessary. He didn’t have to say, ‘Hey, look at how much I loved you!’ In that instance, however, something spoke louder than words.

Once when visiting Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying, I noticed a little orphan following one of the nuns around. The little fellow didn’t say a word. When she stopped, he stopped. When she sat, he sat beside her, just looking at her. She never seemed annoyed at her little tag along, either. He was just there, a part of her, really. Such is the power of love. It draws like an invisible magnet, and will never let go. Love is reciprocal in that sense. The little fellow was starving for love, and when he got it, love seemed to generate new love that he could give back in return by simply looking at her, knowing she loved him.

This should be a principle that we all maintain. That is, love is a presence. A person. A response, not measured in dollars and cents, or hours donated to charity, or stuffed in an enveloped as a missionary offering. True love is the silent language of the heart which says 'I love you unconditionally just as you are.'

May God renew within each of us the gift that cannot be bought or sold— the gift of love.

I am yours for the journey, 

JimR_/