My dear readers could have most possibly posed this question to someone either to confirm whether they loved them, or to express doubt. Well, I am not here to stuff my fingers into your nose, I only meant to remind you about that ocassion when you had to make the grand enquiry about this matter, or someone else made the grand enquiry. The obvious outcome is equivalent to the emotional state of a poor creature in a truth game. The skin colour automatically turns pink and before long the next question is …. What do you want? and on and off the conversation goes and by the end, a whole future is determined….
We tend to doubt human love when we don’t get what we want. We are at a stage when we think our parents don’t love us but we later grow up and realize that we were only adolescents seeking attention. We doubt love when we have our best friend missing all our important events of our lives. A married woman grows suspicious when her husband slowly forgets the children’s birthdays and important anniversaries over what she’d call flimsy reasons.
We scarcely doubt human love when a genuine sacrifice is made. When he or she fails to hang out with friends and colleagues in order to have quality time with family. When they fail to buy themselves a luxurious mansion in order to pay my school fee. When they miss a date to be at my birthday party. When they lose their jobs trying to defend my rights. In these circumstances, we never doubt love.
Our good Lord asks us time and again the same question,` Do you love me? ‘ We will always reply, `what do you want me to do?’
One clear thing, is that love for God cannot remain abstract. It cannot remain on the theoretical plane. It has to be manifested by deeds, and even to a higher level, by sacrifice. Sacrifice in big and small things alike. With the detail of making a small detour to say hi to Jesus in the nearby church. In the effort to concentrate at sunday mass, in the effort to take some minutes of silence with Jesus, in the effort to bring our lost friends back to the faith…… in that extra effort to avoid the ocassions of sin.
It’d be rather painful if at the last day, the good shepherd were to say to the goats on His left, `You did not love me. ‘ Painful if the goats are people we know, and even worse, if we are the goats.