Thursday After the Epiphany

“Beloved, we love God because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” [1 John 4:19-21]

When I read these opening lines of today’s First Reading, my thoughts turned instantly to Dorothy Day’s famous [I think!] quote: “I really only love God as much as the person I love the least.”
 
This is challenging, to say the least. To my chagrin, I can readily list several
people as prime candidates to be my least favorite person. It’s sobering to realize that I love God only as much as I do each of them.

God’s love for us is independent of our love of God. Our love is, therefore, a
response to God’s love; it’s never our initiative and we need to show our love for God primarily in the way we love our sisters and brothers.

At least in a certain sense, it’s not difficult to love the God we can’t see. It’s
much tougher to love God in the faces not only of those we can’t abide, but also in those of the hungry and the homeless who roam our streets, not to mention the tens of millions of refugees and migrants who seek somewhere safe to land.

I’m tempted to throw my hands up in despair. Instead, I will beg the Lord to help me open my heart a millimeter at a time.