Holy Nights
1 John 4: 7-13
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| Sulamith Wulfing |
Dear brothers, let us bear love toward one another,
for true love comes from God; everyone who is truly loving is born of God and
knows God.
Whoever does not truly love has not known God, for
God is love.
And this is what revealed God’s love among us, that
God has sent into the world his only begotten Son in order that we might live
through Him.
God’s love consists in this: not in the way that we
have loved him, but that he has loved us, and has given his Son to save us from
the banishment of sin.
My dearly beloved, if God has so loved us, so also
should we bear love toward one another.
Until now no one has seen God with his eyes. When
we bring love to one another, God dwells in us and his love is fulfilled in us.
By this we know that we dwell in him and he in us,
because he has given us of his Spirit.
Holy Nights
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| Sulamith Wulfing |
December 30, 2012
1 John 4: 7-13
Studies have shown that people often fall in love in
response to the overtures of those who are in love with them. They fall in love
because they are loved.
Today’s reading say that God’s love is different. God
doesn’t love us because we love Him. God’s love generates itself. He loves us
no matter whether we reciprocate or not. Even when humankind has turned away
from Him, or has failed to recognize Him, He poured out His Being of Love in
the form of His Son, the Word Incarnate.
Ancient scripture says that God’s intention for humankind
was that we were to be His image and likeness. To become like Him means that we
so evolve our capacity to love, that it can generate itself; that it can pour
itself forth toward our fellow human beings; that our love is ever fresh, even
if they don’t return it; even if they aren’t aware of it.
To be able to fulfill this high goal of love means that
Christ has been born in us. It means that He dwells in our heart. In fact, that
was why He came, hoping that we would give Him a dwelling in our heart. For as
Angelus Silesius says
Though Jesus Christ in Bethlehem
A thousand times his Mother bore,
Is he not born again in thee
Then art thou lost for evermore.[1]
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