Put a Little Love in Your Heart

"First let a little love find entrance into their hearts, and the rest will follow." St. Philip Neri

Saturday was the feast day of St. Philip Neri. Someone sent a meme on Facebook with the above quote. Of course, me being me, one of the things I thought of was the song "Put a Little Love in Your Heart", sung by Jackie DeShannon in 1969. Jackie DeShannon also sang the song "What the World Need Now (is Love Sweet Love) in 1965. There may be some who feel that the whole problem in the Church today is the sappy idea of love carried over from the 60's and 70's and reflected in such songs as these two. To a certain extent they may be right. The love of God is not about sappy sentimentality. It is not all about the feels. Even so, I'm going to go with it. It can't hurt to put a little love, sweet love in our hearts. St. Philip Neri seemed to think that it was a good place to start.

We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. 1 John 4:16

Sunday was the Feast of the Holy Trinity. "The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the hierarchy of the truths of faith" (Catechism of the Catholic church, 234). We call it a mystery because the totality of the Triune God is beyond our comprehension this side of heaven and even in heaven we will be eternally contemplating and comprehending the reality of the Trinity. That does not mean, however, that the Trinity is beyond any understanding at all. There are things that God has revealed about himself and that we can understand. A good place to start is, "God is love" 

Jesus made manifest the face of God, in substance One and in persons Triune; God is all and only Love, in a subsistent relationship that creates, redeems and sanctifies all: Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Pope Francis Feast of the Holy Trinity 2017  

Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is wholly and only love, the purest, infinite and eternal love. He does not live in splendid solitude but rather is an inexhaustible source of life that is ceaselessly given and communicated...All things derive from love, aspire to love and move impelled by love, though naturally with varying degrees of awareness and freedom...It is an identity that shines upon the whole of Creation, in which all beings for the very fact that they exist and because of the "fabric" of which they are made point to a transcendent Principle, to eternal and infinite Life which is given, in a word, to Love...The strongest proof that we are made in the image of the Trinity is this: love alone makes us happy because we live in a relationship, and we live to love and to be loved. Borrowing an analogy from biology, we could say that imprinted upon his "genome", the human being bears a profound mark of the Trinity, of God as Love. Pope Benedict XVI Feast of the Holy Trinity 2009

Three persons who are one God does not really compute for us. Only a force that unites so completely and perfectly can make that possible. That force is love. Not only do the Father, Son and Holy Spirit love each other but they are love itself. Love itself in a communion of love. This love then communicates itself through creating life and loving the life they created. 

But the mystery of the Trinity also speaks to us of ourselves, of our relationship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In fact, through baptism the Holy Spirit has placed us in the heart and the very life of God, who is a communion of love. God is a "family" of three Persons who love each other so much as to form a single whole. This "divine family" is not closed in on itself, but is open. It communicates itself in creation and in history and has entered into the world of men to call everyone to form part of it. The Trinitarian horizon of communion surround all of us and stimulates us to live in love and fraternal sharing, certain that where there is love, there is God. Pope Francis Feast of the Holy Trinity 2016

All of creation reflects this love and life. As Christians we are invited to not only reflect it but to become a part of it, to enter into the love and life of the Trinity.

The divine Trinity takes up his abode in us on the day of our Baptism: "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit". Every time we sign ourselves with the sign of the Cross we remember God's name in which we were baptized. Pope Benedict XVI Feast the Holy Trinity 2010

Everything in Christian life revolves around the Mystery of the Trinity and is fulfilled according to this infinite mystery. Therefore, we seek to always hold high the "tone" of our life, remembering what goal, what glory we exist for, work for, struggle for, suffer for; and what immense reward we are called to. This mystery embraces our entire life and our entire Christian being. We remember it, for example, each time we make the sign of the Cross: in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...In a word, we have been entrusted with the task of edifying ecclesial communities which increasingly become families, capable of reflecting the splendor of the Trinity and evangelizing not only with the words but with the power of the love of God that lives within us. Pope Francis Feast of the Holy Trinity 2015

What is this eternal life? It is the immeasurable and freely given love of the Father which Jesus gave on the Cross, offer his life for our salvation. And this love with the action of the Holy Spirit has shined a new light on the earth and into every human heart that welcomes him... Pope Francis Feast of the Holy Trinity 2017

Every time we make the sign of the cross we profess our faith in the Trinity. We remember our baptism and unite ourselves to the love and life of the Trinity. 

...[God] is tangible; he is not abstract but has a name: “God is love” His is not a sentimental, emotional kind of love but the love of the Father who is the origin of all life, the love of the Son who dies on the Cross and is raised, the love of the Spirit who renews human beings and the world.  Pope Francis Feast of the Holy Trinity 2013

What is this tangible love that is not a sentimental, emotional kind of love? How do we love so that it is not all about feeling the feels?

Love is what we do

"The first is this: 'Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' there is no other commandment greater than these." The scribe said to him, "Well said teacher. You are right in saying. 'He is One and there is no other than he.' And to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." And when Jesus saw that [he] answered with understanding, he said to him, "your are not far from the kingdom of God." And no one dared to ask him any more questions. Mk 12:29-34

Love is not something we feel, it is something we do. We do it with all our being and with all our strength.

Love is our disposition 

[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13:7-8, 13

Faith, hope and love are called the theological virtues and are considered to be gifts of grace from God. They are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform all the moral virtues and give life to them. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. The Catechism defines virtue as "an habitual and firm disposition to do the good". "The theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have the One and Triune God for their origin, motive and object - God known by faith, God hoped in and loved for his own sake. (CCC 1803, 1812-13, 1840-41)

Love is the inherent quality of our mind and character. It arranges us and orders us in relationship with God and with others.

Love identifies us

I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have love you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. Jn 13:34-35

I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you love me.

But whoever keeps his word, the love of God is truly perfected in him. This is the way we may know that we are in union with him: whoever claims to abide in him ought to live [just] as he lived. 1 Jn 2:5

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 tells us that we are nothing without love, that we can do nothing and gain nothing without love. Matthew 12:34 tells us that love is worth more than burnt offerings and sacrifices. Love is what makes us and what we do identifiable as Christian. We are recognized as belonging to Christ because of love.

Love is our being

No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. 1 Jn 4:12

Of course, this blog post is not meant to be a comprehensive treatment on the Trinity or on what love is. The word love is used hundreds of times in both the Old and New Testaments. There is no way I could cover that all. This is merely meant to be but a reflection as a place to start. God is love, the love within the Trinity that is the spark of our very existence; that embraces our "entire life and our entire Christian being"; that because of baptism abides in us so that the love of the Trinity can fill us with the fullness of God. We not only say love, we do love and united to the Trinity we can be love. 

that he may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner self,

and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love,

may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine by the power at work within us,

to him be the glory in the church and Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen Ephesians 3:16-21

Put a little God is love, sweet love in your heart. That love will lift you higher and higher than you've ever been lifted before to a more excellent way. The Way, the Truth and the Life of Jesus Christ. United with the Trinity we become not only loving but love itself. And the world will be a better place. The rest will follow.

I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly Jn 10:10

In this love is brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world 1 Jn 4:17

Put a little love in your hearts - Jackie DeShannone - 1969

What the world needs now is love sweet love - Jackie DeShannon - 1965

(Your Love Keeps Lifting me) Higher and Higher - Jackie Wilson - 1967