is your love genuine?
"By obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves for a genuine love." —1 Peter 1:22
Is your love for your spouse, parents, or children genuine? Almost everyone would automatically answer "Yes." Do you believe that your family members and friends genuinely love you? Early in their lives, most people automatically answer "Yes."
Over the years, however, we usually are forced to conclude that some people's "love" for us has not been genuine. This makes us wonder if we will be sadly disappointed in other people's "love" for us. At some point in our lives, we suspect that even we ourselves have not been totally genuine in our love. Others are surprised that we haven't noticed it earlier.
Why not find out about "genuine love" now? Has your love been preceded by being purified through obedience to the truth? (1 Pt 1:22) If not, it probably isn't genuine. Is your love based on faith, virtue, discernment, self-control, perseverance, piety, and care for your brothers and sisters? (2 Pt 1:5-7) If not, your love probably isn't genuine.
Genuine love is humanly impossible, always accessible by God's grace, and the culminating grace of a great series of graces. Love genuinely.
Prayer: Father, send the Holy Spirit of love to teach me to love (see Rm 5:5).
Promise: "Realize that you were delivered from the futile way of life your fathers handed on to you, not by any diminishable sum of silver or gold, but by Christ's blood beyond all price." —1 Pt 1:18-19
Praise: At age 14, her teachers prophesied that Catherine would become a great saint. At age 17, she took the name Mary Magdalene and eventually became St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi.
Rescript: †Most Reverend Joseph R. Binzer, Auxiliary Bishop, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, November 6, 2015
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