To love and to remain in Love is more action than words. It is a dynamic of the heart that we unfold from within ourselves. It is a way of being and being with others and with the Lord that goes far beyond the horizon of mere words. To remain in love means not to be “trapped” by commandments and formulas, but to nourish relationships with the Gospel, with novelty, with the Good News. To remain in love is a response to the grateful recognition of a First Love freely received. To be with Him, seeking the encounter, the word, the event that speaks to us of Him. It is to seek Him with the sole interest of being in His Presence and to recognize Him in what we have to live.
We are invited to live in Love and to remain in it, recognizing that it is the Lord who has chosen us. It is not our merits that have turned the Lord’s gaze towards us, but His unconditional and gratuitous love that is revealed to us in the small details of our daily lives.
In this Love that is given to us unconditionally and without our having done anything to deserve it, we are invited to remain. Through Him we are invited to share His table, to feed on His Word and to participate in His Life. And this is not an obligation but a free invitation. And so our response should not be a compliance but a free decision, a free response to love the One who first loved us.
Therefore, to remain in Love is to choose the Lord, to want to live the Life in abundance that He gives us in every event of our life. Being faithful to the love we have received, welcoming the gestures of Christ and making them our own in our relationship with others. Demonstrating love in our daily gestures with our brothers and sisters, taking care of our bonds, remaining in them even in the differences, letting a mistake pass, dealing with a bad moment with good humor, reaching out to those we love the least… as a loving response, for so much love received.
Bettina Raed
Vice International Director
Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network