“My Love For You”

Message from Fr. Jose Koluthara, CMI

Lord Jesus, help us to love you as you loved, to live as you lived, to serve as you served.

My Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways… I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle light. I love thee freely…I love thee purely…I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life and…I shall but love thee better after death.” With these words, poet Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) gave eloquent expression to her love for her future husband, Robert Browning (1812-1889). Many through the years have made these words their own when searching to find a way to communicate their feelings to their beloved.

“How do I love thee?” God asks, and through the imagination of the Exodus author, God tells us of a fierce and protective love like that of a mother eagle encouraging its young to grow and develop (Ex 19:1-6). God’s love is also a spousal and desirous of an unending covenantal relationship. God’s love speaks of a belonging that makes special and holy the beloved. You are mine; I am yours, promises the God of Exodus.

“How do I love thee?” When Paul broaches that question and answers for God, his is an amazing declaration of the underserved and unrequited love of God for humankind (Rom 5:6-11). We were powerless, godless; we were enemies and sinners and in complete disregard of our unworthiness, and with a generosity that defies human logic, God loved us to such an extreme that God sent divinity into time and space to become one of us and to die for us in order to achieve our justification. Justification, or being set in right relationship to God, is the measureless measure of God’s love.

“How do I love thee?” I love you, pledges Jesus in Matthew’s gospel (Mt 9:36-10:8), as a shepherd loves the sheep, even when, and especially when, the sheep wander, tired and aimless, with no worthy leader to tend to them. I love you like the farmer loves the harvest and risks all to see it safely and completely gathered in. I love you as deeply as to call you, when the world may regard as unlikely candidates for leadership – I call you, tax collector, the sinner, the betrayer, the political extremist… I call you all to be my hands, my feet, my mind and heart for a needy world. “How do I love thee?” I love you fully and freely, and as God, I choose to love you in life and beyond death for everlasting life.