A Mini-Love Letter From Your Father
A FERVERINO THOUGHT:
In Love with Jesus
By Romuald B. Simeone
Brethren in Christ:
In August 1972 at Castelgandolfo, Pope Paul VI spoke on evangelization and he reconciled the Anglican bishop of Dublin with His Catholic counterpart.
The Pope later saw this patch I had stuck on my Bible and asked what it was. I said “Jesus – One Way”. He winced once and responded: “No, never! Jesus is not ever one way…He is the ONLY way!”
Bear with the following curious exploration in this vein of exactitude:
God does not love us.
Jesus does not love us.
Nor does Jesus command we love God ourselves or our neighbors.
Shocking? Not at all
Listen on:
The prophets did proclaim: “Yahweh loves us”.
But, Jesus perfecting and completing what was yet incomplete revelation, speaking directly from His Father, taught and passed on that that is “not the exact truth”.
Jesus revealed far more.
The full truth is this: We must not just love but be IN LOVE.
God does not simply love us; He cares and focuses on us from the moment of giving each creational birth to receiving us with open arms in His kingdom.
Likewise Jesus did not simply command you to love God, your neighbor or yourself, but to give each the fullness of love.
What Jesus said, modeled and commanded is:
You are to love God, self and neighbor
AS I love; His actions show He is in Love with us and expects that in return. Jesus witnesses not love but the perfection of Love…a total, complete, a being “IN-love” Love.
Re-read the New Testament in this sense
and note that the nature of Christ-love is solely and only “Agape-love” …..
It is to be “in-love” and nothing less, total love
of mind heart and will.
For believer-follower-Christians, this is post-Pentecost love,
the love the apostles finally were fired with,
the love whereby they evangelized, converted and brought the Church to birth in Acts 2….
the love they practiced taught and under inspiration wrote as being Christ-love.
As St. Jerome stated “The New Testament is
a love letter from the Father”.
Mystery of mysteries…
The Son of God, the Word incarnated in Jesus the Christ, reveals and images through Himself
this most incomprehensible, an all-permeating truth…Yahweh is far more than the God who loves: He is our personal loving Father, who is IN LOVE WITH US…so much so that He gave us His own Son to espouse each and every soul. The Father wills it!
Being “In-Love” with Jesus saying is to say: “Yes, Yes, I do! I take you for my own and renounce all others!”
This is the essence of evangelization, not to love God, neighbor and self…but to love with His love…To be “in love”…nothing less, loving Him and one another with our whole mind, heart and will so that we want to model Him, talk about Him, refer to Him, defer to Him, confer with Him, and desire others to likewise fall in love with Him!
I evangelize by proclaiming and modeling that I am in love with His Person and Mission. There is no other God-given plan for man!
Amen, God Bless you as we share this repast and as you proceed on your way out into the world to share Who you are In Love with!
Romuald B. Simeone
©Copyright 2009 by Dialog International Press, LLC