To “love your neighbor as yourself” is to want good, the truly good, for ourselves and the person on the other side of the street, the house, the cubical, and the screen. Hopefully, over the last month, you have seen the truly good for yourself—a glory not of your own making, but of God’s knowing and crafting. What we have come (are coming) to know, desire, and love about ourselves through Psalm 139 and the Examen, is what we are made to know, desire, and love for our neighbor. Not a “generic” good or even our own vailed perception of good, but The Good of God with, God for, and God in them.
To love another well, we must love the truth, and, as Thomas Merton once pointed out,
“The truth I must love in my [neighbor] s God Himself, living in "[them]. I must seek the life of the Spirit of God breathing in [them]. And I can only discern and follow that mysterious life by the action of the same Holy Spirit living and acting in the depths of my own heart.”
We enter into a new day and week in which “the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining” (1 Jn. 2:8)—even if unacknowledged or avoided—in the lives of those around us. So let us pray together to love well—to discern and follow the Truth of God’s love in His “wonderful works.”
Father, let me see you with us—myself and my neighbor. Within us and for us, in every step of our past, in Your presence now, and within the days written in Your life.
Holy Spirit, let me see Your searching, knowing, and leading in my neighbor. Let me see where are You, the light of life, are already shining.
Jesus, lead me in joining Your Way, Your Truth, Your life given in love for their true good.
Grant me the strength to wait until I see, and when I see, grant me the courage to love well and true.
By this, is love perfected with us. Within Your love, we live. Amen.