The Necessity of Love

Wednesday, August 11, 2010
11:05 PM

Suppose your memory were entirely wiped. Where would your faith in God be much less your concept of Him? Would you, on Judgment Day, still be held accountable for not having faith in God? Quite the opposite is true! You are required to love God. How can you? Innately in every man there is some idea of God, regardless of whether man can express that idea in words or symbols or not express it. Furthermore, there is innate in every man the knowledge of the moral law that tells a man what is good and right. Can a man forget such things? Is it not true that God has ingrained in man's mind such truths? Or rather, is it not true that if a man's soul is headed towards the Lord, then the Lord will lead the man back to truth. Since it is possible that a man whose memory is lost may never hear of God again or even learn a language again, God will surely be just and not count it against that man for having lack of knowledge. thus, knowledge from the outset is clearly not what God is seeking from man.

What is God seeking from humans? It must be that which man can offer God at every moment: the choice of his free will. How can a man choose God if he has forgotten who God is? - By loving his neighbor. If you love your neighbor, you are indeed loving God because God is love. Only those who have knowledge are required to do more because they have been given the capability of doing more. Thus, these extra acts, as they could be termed, are ways that gifted (or blessed) people can deepen in their relationship with God and love Him. Having faith in God; being baptized; partaking of the Eucharist; all of these are acts of loving God. Loving your neighbor is an act of loving God; that is why God did not put us in a universe alone. We are not on a planet full of people merely as a consequence of human reproduction, for if it were necessary, God could have created a new universe for every human soul that came into existence. On the contrary, God placed us an a planet with other people in order that we could love and be loved by other people, and in so doing, love and be loved by God.