kneel in wonder at heaven touching earth

Help us to show his love

This Sunday, the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, is a very rare Sunday, so rare, in fact, that it doesn’t even have its own Collects and Post-Communion Prayer. The Collect quoted below is the correct one for this Sunday, but it is actually the Additional Collect for the Third Sunday before Lent. The reason for this rather strange anomaly is because Lent and Easter were so very early this year, which I wrote about way back at the beginning of February.

“Help us to show his love” — “love” (again), a subject talked about a lot on this blog. But how can we “show” God’s love to the world?

Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34). I think that’s how we demonstrate the Father’s love for us; we show it in the way we love each other, those around us, and throughout the rest of the world.

Angel, one of the people who left a comment on my post for the Blog Action Day earlier this week, wrote a very moving post himself for Blog Action Day. In it he wrote:

So, how did I escape from poverty? I did not sell my soul and honor, as I strongly believe that it this will only bring me to a more pitiable life, in the long run. Although the escape was gradual and the road was stiff, I was determined that I will be able to make it. No, I did not get rich, but at least I am having a good fight.

Actually, there was no secret or magic. It only began from a single word – family.

I was raised with a broken family so basically, I did not have one. When I realized that, I thought why not treat every person I meet as my family? Maybe, I will be inspired to make plans to escape poverty. Maybe, they will be kind enough to help me not by giving me fish but teaching me how to catch them. And surprisingly, it did help a lot. But the biggest help I got is the lesson I learned, that is to study harder, not about academics but how to observe life.

“Family”, if we, too, can treat everyone we meet as family, then perhaps we, too, can help to lift others from poverty, or be lifted from it ourselves. And in that transformation of our lives, we’ll be showing others how God loves them, and us.

Eternal God,
whose Son went among the crowds
and brought healing with his touch:
help us to show his love,
in your Church as we gather together,
and by our lives as they are transformed
     into the image of Christ our Lord. Amen.

Additional Collect for The Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

Christ’s death as an example of love

My friend (who is studying to become a Licensed Reader) and I were looking through some of the books that I have for inspiration and information for the essay that she’s working on. We had a look in The Christian Theology Reader, edited by Alister E McGrath — basically a book of extended quotes — and came across this quote from Clement of Alexandria. I found it incredibly moving, and it encapsulates so much of what I think about God being love, and expressing that love through his humanity as Jesus. I thought I would share the full quote with you here.

Clement of Alexandria on Christ’s death as an example of love

Consider the mysteries of love, and you will then have a vision of the bosom of the Father, whom the only-begotten God alone has declared. God himself is love, and for the sake of this love he made himself known. And while the unutterable nature of God is Father, his sympathy with us is Mother. It was in his love that the Father became the nature which derives from woman, and the great proof of this is the Son whom he begot from himself, and the love that was the fruit produced from his love. For this he came down, for this he assumed human nature, for this he willingly endured the sufferings of humanity, that being reduced to the measure of our weakness, he might raise us to the measure of his power. And just before he poured out his offering, when he gave himself as a ransom, he left us a new testament: “I give you my love” (John 13:34). What is the nature and extent of this love? For each of us he laid down his life, the life which was worth the whole universe, and he requires in return that we should do the same for each other.

I had one of those real “Wow!” moments when I first read that.

It originally comes from a book written, probably, in the first decade of the third century — Clement of Alexandria: The Exhortation to the Greeks; The Rich Man’s Salavation.