30 Aug A Quote That Gives Peace to Me

I used to give extra credit once a week on high school quizzes if my students wrote word-for-word a quote I’d given them with their vocabulary list that week. The only quote I ever gave attributed to “anonymous” was this one. I wish the author was known.

“You cannot love God until you love others;                                                     

You cannot love others until you love yourself;

You cannot love yourself until you know how much God loves you.” anonymous

How many people are guilty of not loving themselves? Perhaps most of us, at least at times if we’re honest.

You can’t truly love a person you can’t trust. Can you trust yourself? You can’t trust a person you don’t truly know. Do you really know yourself, your deepest desires, what makes you tick? When is the last time you thought about your life and where you’re headed? You’re important, too. You’re most important when you’re being the best person you’re capable of being because it’s then that you’re fulfilling God’s Will. Being the best person you can be requires that we know our strengths, our weaknesses, our individual abilities, and lack of abilities to use them in original ways to make the world a more loving place. God can help us face our frailties, admit them, and strive to improve those that can be improved, but we need to trust Him to help us.

Our assignment in this life is to know, love, and serve God. Fulfilling this mission brings us the greatest joy possible. How can we know God if we can’t see, feel, or hear Him? We must open our hearts to Him. Invite Him in. Ask Him for the graces we need to perceive Him in all His workings. Read His Word. Sit with Him. Question Him. Quiet our minds. Allow Him space and time to answer. Listen to Him, as we would listen to an old established friend. Care what He has to say. Mull it over. Let it sink in. As we begin to know Him, we can hand our concerns to Him. Talk them over with Him, then place them firmly in His hands and leave them there. We’ll be tempted to take them back and try to solve them in our own way. We must be patient and allow God to use these concerns in the way that’s best for us, for our souls.

The way we love and serve God is by loving and serving others. As we serve them, we get to know them better. We see their worries up close. We judge less because we see they’re like us, just struggling to live in the best way they know how. Our serving others gives them hope to go on. That gives us joy. Man was made to be interdependent. We thrive on love from each other. There are some who never learned how to love. Love them anyway. Teach them to love by loving them. If they don’t thank you, consider it a blessing. God will thank you. “…whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” (New American Bible, Matthew 26:40).

There’s a saying, “You can’t give what you don’t have.” You can’t pour love out into others until you allow yourself to be filled with love,  pure love, agape love, love that isn’t earned but overflows from Love Himself, the One Who created you because He saw His Universe as incomplete without you in it. He knew from the beginning of time you would have a certain desired impact on his creation. Yes, He also sees your failures, but those are used as well in the eternal economy. You will understand it all in the next life, in the beatific vision. God is not happy to watch you beat yourself up, so stop it. Confess when you make mistakes and forgive yourself. From the lips of Jesus: “…Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” (Mark 12:31). This presupposes we love ourselves. Loving is caring for the well-being of the beloved. Loving yourself means making sure you have the things you need to thrive; food, hydration, housing, clothing, but also, rewarding employment of time, peace of mind, reflection, joy, a sense of purpose, healthy relationships, and a strong trust in God’s generous plan for us.

The airlines instruct passengers with a child to put their oxygen mask on first in case of an emergency. Then you’ll be better prepared to put your child’s mask on. We need to love and care for ourselves first. We need to breathe in the Holy Spirit−Breathe the Breath of God−Before we can take that Breath to His children.

Father Larry Richards likes to say, “No bible, no breakfast,” and “No bible, no bed,” as a reminder for us to set aside time in the morning and evening to fill our souls with God’s instruction.  The best way to start the day is silently in His presence reading His Word or just resting in Him, allowing Him to radiate His reviving love into our souls so we can love ourselves. It’s energizing. If I’m rushed in the morning, I use Sacred Space found here https://www.sacredspace.ie/daily-prayer to help me calm and concentrate more quickly. Filled with the knowledge of His love, we can go out into the world to love others, thus returning His love because we’ve experienced an inkling of how greatly He loves us. It’s an eternal circle of love radiation energy:

“You cannot love God until you love others;

You cannot love others until you love yourself;

You cannot love yourself until you know how much God loves you.”

 

photo by John Mark Smith on Unsplash.com