Several years ago, a Presbyterian minister I know challenged his congregation to open its doors and its heart more fully to the poor. Initially, the congregation responded with enthusiasm and a number of programs were introduced to invite people from the less-privileged economic areas of the city, including a number of street people, to come to their church.
But the romance soon died as coffee cups and other loose items began to disappear, some handbags were stolen, and the church and meeting space were often left messy and soiled. A number of the congregation began to complain and demand an end to the experiment: “This isn’t what we expected! Our church isn’t clean and safe anymore! We wanted to reach out to these people and this is what we get! This is too messy to continue!”
But the minister held his ground, pointing out that their expectations were naïve, that what they were experiencing was precisely part of the cost of reaching out to the poor, and that Jesus assures us that loving is unsafe and messy, not just in reaching out to the poor but in reaching out to anyone.
We like to think of ourselves as gracious and loving, but truth be told, that’s often predicated on a naïve notion of love. We struggle to love as Jesus invites us to love, namely, to love each other as I have loved you. The last clause in the sentence contains the real challenge: Jesus doesn’t say, love each other according to the spontaneous reactions of your heart; nor, love each other as society defines love. Rather, love each other as I have loved you.
And, for the most part, we struggle to do that.
- We struggle to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek and to reach across to embrace those who hate us. We struggle to pray for those who oppose us.
- We struggle to forgive those who hurt us, to forgive those who murder our loved ones. We struggle to ask God to forgive the people who are hurting us. We struggle to believe, like Jesus, that they are not really cognizant of what they are doing.
- We struggle to be bighearted and take the high road when we’ve been slighted or ignored, and we struggle then to let understanding and empathy replace bitterness and our urge to withdraw. We struggle to let go of grudges.
- We struggle to be vulnerable, to risk humiliation and rejection in our offers of love. We struggle to give up our fear of being misunderstood, of not looking good, of not appearing strong and in control. We struggle to set out barefooted, to love without security in our pockets.
- We struggle to open our hearts enough to imitate Jesus’ universal, nondiscriminating embrace, to stretch our hearts to see everyone as brother or sister, regardless of race, color, or religion. We struggle to stop nursing the silent secret that our own lives and the lives of our loved ones are more precious than those of others.
- We struggle to make a preferential option for the poor, to bring the poor to our tables, to abandon our propensity to prefer the attractive and the influential.
- We struggle to sacrifice ourselves to the point of losing everything for the sake of others, to actually lay down our lives for our friends — and indeed for our enemies. We struggle to be willing to die for people who oppose us and are trying to crucify us.
- We struggle to love with purity of heart, to not subtly seek ourselves within our relationships. We struggle to live chastely, to fully respect and not violate someone else.
- We struggle to walk in patience, giving others the full space they need to relate to us according to their own inner dictates. We struggle to sweat blood in order to be faithful. We struggle to wait in proper patience, in God’s good time, for God’s judgment on right and wrong.
- We struggle to resist our natural urge to judge others, to not impute motives. We struggle to leave judgment to God.
- Finally, not least, we struggle to love and forgive our own selves, knowing that no mistake we make stands between us and God. We struggle to trust that God’s love is enough and that we are forever held inside God’s infinite mercy.
Yes, love is a struggle.
After his wife Raissa died, Jacques Maritain edited a book of her journals. In the Preface to that book, he described her struggle with the illness that eventually killed her. Severely debilitated and unable to speak, she struggled mightily in her last days. Her suffering both tested and matured Maritain’s own faith. Mightily sobered by seeing his wife’s sufferings, he wrote: “Only two kinds of people think that love is easy: saints, who through long years of self-sacrifice have made a habit of virtue, and naïve persons who don’t know what they’re talking about.”
He’s right. Only saints and those who are naïve think love is easy.
