THE TRUTH OF THE

CATHOLIC FAITH

"This I command you: love one another"

-Jn 15:17

LOVE

An inspiring excerpt from

Father Nicholas Maestrini’s

Book Forever Love

The following paper is an excerpt from Father Nicholas Maestrini’s highly acclaimed book Forever Love: God’s Plan for Happiness, prepared exclusively for The Rock of Inspiration. Father Maestrini has been a Priest and missionary for almost 70 years, bringing the Christian message into foreign lands with the PIME Mission Society. This paper is valuable for any Catholic and it is the perfect introduction to the Christian faith for someone who has never heard the Good News.

THE WAY TO HAPPINESS

We all want to be happy. Our desire for happiness, or at least contentment, is one of the basic instincts all humans have in common. Along with the basic instinct for the preservation of life, the search for happiness is one of the most universal motivating forces that we all possess. From the most sophisticated executives in their high-rise office buildings in New York to the most primitive of people in the jungles of Papua, New Guinea, we all want one thing more than anything else: to be happy.

Why is there so much unhappiness in the world? Because we fail to look beyond the material glitter of life. We waste our time pursuing the superficial with neither energy nor interest left to dig deeper into life to discover what is of true value and what is truly good for us. The end result is misery, not happiness.

Where can we turn to find true, lasting happiness? For us Christians who accept and believe in one eternal , all-powerful and loving God, the answer is clear: God. As our Maker and Father who created each one of us as individual immortal beings to be eternally happy with him, he shows us what true happiness really is and how to attain it.

Our search for happiness would be so much easier and clearer if we were merely spirits, but we are not. We are a complex combination of matter and spirit, body and soul, with contradictory desires and inclinations. In our lifelong quest for happiness we experience within us a perpetual conflict between good and bad, right and wrong. Hence, the necessity of making the right decisions. God is always ready to give us the help we need, if we ask for it.

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The Christian religion is not a set of rules, laws and a long list of don’ts. Nor is it a passport to heaven. On the contrary, Christianity is a very positive religion, a religion dedicated to promoting all-out love, total love, burning, self- sacrificing love for God and neighbor according to Jesus’ example and his tremendous love for us. Jesus described a relationship with God as "a living and life-giving spring of water that cleanses us" and that "can quench our thirst for the living God." This is religion, and Christianity truly is God’s Circle of Love linking him to us and us to him.

Why do people, in general, have so little interest in God? And why do they live self-centered, spiritually stagnant lives when they should be afire with love for God and their fellow man? This book is about your personal relationship and love for God.

WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN LIFE?

Like the rest of the world you, too, are craving for a contented meaningful life. You have only one life to live. What do you think you need most to make it worth living, to make it purposeful and successful? To become rich and famous? To be a millionaire? Success in politics? Beauty? Popularity? Power? Fame?

All these things are certainly good, and they can bring us a certain amount of joy and consolation, but do they really make a person happy? Should we look for what is most pleasurable or for what is the best for us? All the things mentioned above are very attractive, but they are also fleeting, unstable and perishable. All of them will pass away. They cannot make a person truly happy for they bring with them endless worries that destroy peace of mind. After all, very few specially gifted people will attain them. And will these earthly goods really satisfy the deepest needs of the human soul? We are immortal beings, we are made for eternity. Our souls crave something more satisfying than fleeting pleasures and perishable possessions.

What then is the supreme, the highest good that is worth pursuing throughout life at whatever cost? Where can we find the right answer? Certainly not in the ancient or modern theories of philosophers who can only create imaginary gods, the fruits of their limited, human minds. Certainly not in the writings of those scientists who proudly proclaim that the universe is a cold, unknown mystery, that we humans are but an unplanned accident of evolution and that after death our consciousness will disappear and there will be nothing left but oblivion. Certainly not in one of the many home-made, historically unfounded religions which, like the mythologies of old simply deify human passions and wickedness. And certainly not in the post-Christian, neo-paganism of today which has lost all sense of spiritual values and is totally dedicated to the pursuit of material goods and enjoyment. Where than can we find an authoritative answer to our question? In the Bible, of course.

LOVE IS THE ANSWER!

The Bible is God’s personal letter to each of us, and it is in this "letter" that he reveals our divine origin and our ultimate goal. In it, he tells us of his eternal love for us and gives us the guidelines to achieve spiritual growth. God, alone, can answer our questions because he made us and he knows us better than we can ever know ourselves.

JESUS’ PROCLAMATION OF LOVE

When a lawyer asked Jesus: "Which commandment of the Law is the greatest," Jesus repeated word for word the commandment God had given to Moses: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This the greatest and the first commandment." Then Jesus added: "The second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the Prophets depend on these commandments."

Later, at the very end of his life on earth, after he had washed the feet of his apostles at the Last Supper, Jesus solemnly unveiled to the world the highest goal of human love ever heard: to love others as he loved his apostles. "This is my commandment, love one another as I have loved you."

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We already know this doctrine. We know that God, alone, is the ultimate goal of our lives. We have heard this thousands of times. We believe it, we cherish it; but has it ever brought about a decisive growth in our spiritual lives? If not, why not? Because we are neither profoundly convinced of God’s love for us, nor do we know the depth and magnitude of his love.

"Love begets love." If we really want to offer God a better love response than what we have offered so far, if we are not satisfied with ourselves and our spiritual life is stagnant, if we want to climb to a higher level of spiritual growth, then we must strive to acquire a greater knowledge and better understanding of God’s love for us. We must develop a more active and intensive spiritual life in order to reach spiritual maturity.

DOES GOD LOVE ME? SHOULD I LOVE HIM?

Jesus loves each one of us with a deep and personal love and we must love him in return with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and give him first place in our lives.

DOES JESUS LOVE ME?

Are you really convinced that Jesus loves you personally? Did you ever doubt Jesus’ love for you, especially under pressure of suffering and adversity? A strong, firm belief in the personal love of Jesus for each of us is the very foundation , the cornerstone of the growth of our spiritual life. We know that religion is love, but love must be reciprocal. Love is a two-way street.

How deeply convinced are you that Jesus really cares for you, that you are not just one out of billions of individuals born by chance and thrown into this world at the mercy of physical and genetic laws? Or do you think that your sins are too many and too serious for God to forgive you? Are you one of those who wonder: "How can Jesus love me with all my sins and all the wrongs I have done? I never felt a great love for him, so how can he love me so much as to forgive my sins?"

Let me assure you that even if you didn’t care much about him in the past, he loves you still and wants your love in return. His love is forever.

Think. Hasn’t he continued pouring his gifts on you, giving you life and blessings in spite of your sins and lack of love for him? He still wants to give you another chance. He wants you to realize what you are missing by neglecting him, and he is now offering you his help to find a better and more meaningful way of life. Even if you are a great sinner and have wronged many people, cheer up, you are in good company! Not only are we all poor mortals and sinners, but all the saints in heaven, even such great apostles as St. Peter and St. Paul were sinners, too. St. Paul made a public confession when, from his prison in Rome shortly before suffering martyrdom, he wrote: "Christ came into this world to save sinners. Of these I am myself the worst." He had already written to the Romans: "What proves that God loves us is the fact that Christ died for us who were still sinners."

And if all this still does not convince you, listen to Jesus himself: "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." So, the fact that Jesus has come into the world to help sinners out of their spiritual misery is the best guarantee you have that he loves you and me and all of us individually, especially because we are sinners. Doesn’t a doctor care for his sickest patients in a more special manner? Can Jesus do less than a human physician? Rest assured that your belief in Jesus’ personal love for you is solidly rooted in Sacred Scripture.

WILL JESUS FORGIVE MY SINS?

REPENTANCE. One we repent and are sorry for our sins, God will never refuse to forgive us. God will never force us to love him because love is worthless unless it is freely given; and when we tell Jesus sincerely, "Lord, I am sorry!," we open the floodgates of his mercy-we are as safe in his arms as an infant in its mother’s arms. However, as long as we choose sin over God, and fail to repent, how can we expect God’s forgiveness? Repentance is the indispensable condition to receiving God’s forgiveness.

St. Therese of Lisieux used to say that she hoped to go to heaven not because of the good deeds she had performed, but only because of the infinite mercy of the Lord. She believed that for Jesus to forgive fifty, or fifty thousand sins was the same, since his mercy is boundless. This belief is theologically correct because no matter how great or how numerous our sins may be, they can never be greater than the infinite mercy of the Lord.

DO WE LOVE GOD?

Now the big question is: How much do we love God in return for all his love for us?

Once a friend told me: "Father, I am a good Christian. I do some good for others, and I would never do anything to hurt anyone. But I don’t go to Church. My religion is to love my neighbor, but God and churches are not for me." Does this sound familiar? This attitude is shared by a large number of Christians in all walks of life, from executives at the highest levels of industry and the media to ordinary workers. Father Vacek writes: "Almost all Christians talk approvingly about love for others; some talk confidently about God’s love for us; but few are willing to talk about their love for God.

"In short, it is not enough just to love our fellow human beings. Sincere conscience and anonymous theism are not enough….Giving water to a stranger is quite different from desiring to serve Christ. Our explicit intentions make a great difference in our moral life."

"At times, we can and must also direct our love immediately and directly to God. Of course, one way of expressing love for God is to care for God’s creation. But much as taking the garbage out for sick neighbors is no substitute for directly developing an interpersonal relationship with them, so too, doing good works to show love for God presupposes other activities devoted to directly loving God."

EXPRESSING OUR LOVE

Another important quality of spiritual growth is that mutual love should be expressed and re-enforced by the exchange of gifts. We cannot say that we love a person unless we convey our feelings to that person. Without communication our feelings of love remain just that, feelings. Looks, words, touching, gifts are what makes our love real. In the case of gifts, it is the sentimental or economic value of the gift itself that is the language of love. This is what must have been in the mind of the apostle when he wrote: "I live in the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me." Note the use of the singular. St. Paul understood that the divine friendship is always a personal relationship. He gave himself for me and he continues to give himself to each of us, in his Church, in his sacraments and especially in the Eucharist. Such total, all-encompassing love demands an equally total love on our part. This is what it means to fall in love with Jesus.

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