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Reflection: An outbreak of love is sweeping our lives at this time

  • Robert Mosher SSC

Fr Bob Mosher

Fr Bob Mosher

During this time of pandemic, an outbreak of love is sweeping our lives.

A lot of uncertainty surrounds us, and our daily routines are upset. Many of us are either working from home, or not working at all. Wearing masks becomes a responsibility towards our neighbours. School, work, shopping, …

But through it all, the followers of Christ continue to reach out as they can, calling the elderly neighbours to see if they're all right, praying for the sick, helping distribute food, donating blood, and supporting one another. We strive to continue to live the two commandments, loving God and loving our neighbour, the summary of everything we try to live that Jesus reveals in today's Gospel.

Our efforts to love God and our neighbour, within the general emergency that requires social distancing and facemasks, are not meant to make life easy for our community of faith, but to bring us close to God's own work in the world today. We become partners with God in bringing hope and fraternity, justice and solidarity into the world, even in very small ways. Loving God and our neighbour requires a sustainable, ecologically just way of life, since mother Earth is also part of our family, and needs to be respected, in keeping her air clean, her water pure, her soil free of toxic waste.

As we live the details and implications of love even within the trials of a pandemic, we find support, forgiveness, freedom, and the many gifts of God's presence among us that are meant to help us live as people who love our neighbour. Jesus gave his life so that God could raise us up from self-centered or isolated habits of fearful and hateful lives, from the tombs of high walls and closed doors that could kill us spiritually or choke off our humanity.

We revel in this New Life, warmed by the Spirit, walking in the light of the Gospel, united with the family of the Church, at the side of the poor, the sick and the strangers among us, careful not to put ourselves or others in danger, and finding that our love for God rises up naturally-this God who frees us for love, and supports us constantly in this path, bringing about our growth into people who continue to love their neighbour and their natural home despite limitations or personal weaknesses.

Our love for such a loving God, who opens the door to a new way of life, co-workers in the coming of God's Reign on earth, creating a new person within us, will grow and extend outwards, overcoming the most deadly viruses of selfishness and spiritual death in the most spectacular ways. We give thanks for this spread of a Good News response to our dire times today.

Fr Bob Mosher is a Columban priest based at the US Mexico border in El Paso.

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