Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In this Sunday's gospel Jesus tells us something important about love. 

Love; one of the great preoccupations of humanity. 

Love is a concept, a thought, an experience that we cannot seemingly do without. We are surrounded by love, or at least the word, which is something we attach to many things, even down to what we eat, what we drink, or the clothes we wear. Sometimes love is part of the deepest emotions of our heart and soul enmeshed into the very fibre of our being, but perhaps more often than not we use the term carelessly where it is something that proves to be shallow and meaningless. 

Have you ever taken a moment to think about what it means to you? Have you ever been in love? What is it? Have you ever taken time to think about it, to try to understand it? Many philosophers and theologians – those who study the science of thought and religion – have looked at this over centuries, to try to understand the meaning of such a tiny word which has an enormous impact.

The late Pope Benedict in his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" – “God is Love” – helps us. He describes love as having three elements – 3 Greek words. 

The first is termed “eros”, this concerns the fundamental attraction that one feels towards the other, perhaps looks first, perhaps then common interests, perhaps a common view of the world. In essence this is the most intense phase of love; intense but often it is relatively short lived and can be no more than superficial.

The second building block is termed “philia”, where the initial attraction becomes a strong and enduring attachment, where those that love are in effect each other’s best friend, but it is deeper where there is always concern for the other’s feelings and welfare. 

The third element is “agape”. This is where love reaches its fullest form of maturity, it is the point in a relationship where one will give anything and everything for the other, including their lives. For example I have been is situations where a person would willingly give their own life in place of the one dying of illness.

God is truly, madly and deeply in love you, with us. Heaven knows we let God down enough times throughout the history of humanity and in our personal history too. But God reaches out across history to embrace us in the fullest form of agape, coming to us in the person of Jesus, in His life, death and resurrection, to enable us to die to the poison of sin and to rise to a new and eternal life in an endless embrace of eternal joy where the shadows in our imperfect love here in this life simply vanishes forever to be replaced by something immeasurably beautiful and glorious.

Love is always about a relationship, it is always about reciprocity – it’s a two-way street. What has brought you here today? Do you love God? How can you show that you do? It’s quite simple really “if you love me you will keep my commandments” – the core of this love is love of God and love of those around us. 

This is easy to say but hard to do; we are surrounded by influences that want to pull us towards ourselves, where we put ourselves in prime position, though we always experience that this is something that leaves us feeling unsettled, anxious, detached from what we feel our true selves to be; someone who created in the image and likeness of God – the image and likeness of love.

But in the paschal mystery – the life, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven of Jesus and the decent of the Holy Spirit – we are not left as orphans to struggle on alone. As Jesus is in the Father through the Holy Spirit, we too are one with all three persons of the Trinity through the sacraments. 

We are not alone, Jesus is always with us. If we stay close to Jesus we experience His love in our hearts and souls. In the love of Jesus we are always embraced too by the love of the Father; the Holy Spirit has been given to us.

The victory of love over sin has been won for us by Jesus; it is up to us to make that victory our own. 

Please accept an assurance of my daily prayers for your needs and intentions. 

God bless and keep you always.

Fr Chris