God’s Love Never Fails

 

July 16, 2024

God’s Love Never Fails

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Hi!  How is each and every one? I just finished video greetings to a young octogenarian after 38 years of having been out of touch.  I was requested maybe you can say something more? So how did I manage myself through the challenge given that I had never done any personal video up to this moment.  I have no technological experience of it. But there is always a first time, right?

So I asked around, imagined what each one instructed me to do, prayed for what ‘maybe you can say something more’ means? The thought was to recall the year a group of us were sent on a mission to settle down in the north of Taiwan. So that made it.  I said something more than ordinary.  It was a historical video greeting.

Now let us get back to work on this post that had to give way to that challenge. Once again thank you for waiting and for your patience as always for delays in these weekly shares with you.

Following is the continuation of our divine longing for dignity (From Broken Gods, Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Gregory K. Popcak, Ph. D. Ch 5).

The Source of Our Dignity

The modern world has a skewed view of what gives a person dignity.  We tend to think that our dignity is tied up in our possessions, our status, our accomplishments, or our position in society.  But none of these things is powerful enough or stable enough to convey the innate dignity that each of us has in the eyes of God.

From Go and Do Likewise (IV) opusdei.org:  “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution.  Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.”(Pope Benedict XVI, Homily at Mass on the Occasion of the Beginning of his Petrine Ministry, 24-IV-2005) The fact that each person is individually “loved into existence” by God is the first truth that we are all called to embrace, and the first truth we are called to share with others.  Speaking about this beautiful reality of human dignity, the constitution Gaudium et Spes explains, “For if people exist it is because God has created them through love, and through love continues to keep them in existence. They cannot live fully in the truth unless they freely acknowledge that love and entrust themselves to their creator.”(Gaudium et Spes, no. 19).

A friend of mine is caring for his elderly father.  His father can do little for himself.  He is weak and sickly, and it is difficult for him to get out of bed.  But my friend loves his father.  He visits him daily in the nursing facility.  He brings his father little treats and tokens of his affection.  He tells the staff stories of his father’s younger days, the adventures he has as a young man and the kind of father he was.  My friend’s love for his father shines out. Thanks to my friend’s dedication, the staff  treat my friend’s father with a little extra respect.  They don’t know him.  They don’t have any reason to consider him in any different light than any of the other patients in the nursing home.  So why do they take a little extra time with him and speak to him more gently?  Because he is loved.

A baby can’t do anything for herself.  She can’t bathe or feed or dress herself.  She can’t help pay the bills or clean the house.  Despite all this, strangers see her and say how beautiful and precious she is.  Why?  Because she is loved.

Our dignity and value as persons do not derive from what we can do.  They are anchored in God’s undying, perpetual love for us.  As the quote at the beginning of this chapter asserts, each person is sacred and worthy of awe because of God’s miraculous love for us.  Even if the love of others fails, God’s love never fails (see 1 Chr 16:34). 

God loves you so much that not only has he made you in his image, but he was born, lived, suffered, died, and rose again so that you might know how much you are worth to him.  And if that wasn’t enough, he loves you so much that he wants to make you a god—a being who is perfect and immortal and intimately united to himself—so that you can spend all of eternity being loved by him.

Given that God loves you and me madly and He wants to make you and me gods, what are you and I ask myself the same what am I supposed to do?

Simple!  Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourselves. Adore Him, thank Him, be sorry for your misgivings against Him and others, and ask Him for anything and everything you need. Enrich and nurture your relationship with God more and more each day.  At the end of the day our relationship with Him is the most important relationship we have to take care of until He takes us with Him to His kingdom to be happy forever.

See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”

Affectionately,                    

Guadalupinky