DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

And Christ said, “But I tell you: love your enemies! Pray for people who persecute you! That way, you’ll be children of your father in heaven! After all, he makes his sun rise on bad and good alike and sends rain both on the upright and on the unjust.” – Matthew 5:44-45 NTE

Twenty feet away from me is a tree that yields an amazing harvest of fruit.  And this one tree serves as Providence for a number of crows and other feathered residents.  And I also find the crows so joyful in their dining, they caw and caw in thankful praise.   I also sense that prosperous tree is joyful with them.

The More Perfect Love we gain and have in Christ has many dimensions, one of which is the quality I term as “Providential Love”. This is a very human love, though it seems to go counter to our sinful nature, a very human love that is yet so Divine in manner.

I offer that we are called to Love our friends and to love our enemies with no mere declarations of our Love, our half-hearted, reluctant promises of our Love, but with the Providential Love of God. God’s Providence is not meant merely for me. God’s Providence is not merely for the privileged. God’s Providence in not meant for only my kind, my nation, my “people” … but for all, friend and enemy alike, kin and stranger alike, whatever “us” and “them” demarcation we might conjure, for all of us, the Lord sends the sunshine and the rain.

If we claim we Love with God’s Holy Love, God’s Providential Love, then we share with others. Even if it is but five loaves of bread and two small fish, we share. And when share … then the Providential Love flows through us and into the hearts of those about us. And in the daring to share, we find our mutual Providence. This is the faithful, thankful economics of the Lord, but more often we cling to the fearful, self-centered economics of this world.

We work with diligence these fields of the Lord… and as thankful souls, we share.

Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz