Jesus offers us a simple instruction to love.

The Lion and the Lamb

Jesus’s first greatest commandment was

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

Jesus’s second greatest commandment was

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

This was Jesus’s instruction on love. The three things: Love God, Love yourself, and Love others.

This is a simple instruction yet challenging.  We often are struggling to love others. In our life, we may be hurt by others. How can we love those who hurt us? It is tough to love our enemies.

Love for God

God have purpose for us. We suffered to learn and to grow. God tests and challenge us to continue love Him. It is a way God shapes us to become a better person. It is just like a hammer and chisel being blow. Each blow, it hurts. But, in the end, you become beautiful.

How can we love God?

We can love God by pray, reading Bible, teach other people about God, and to meet Jesus through Sacrament: Baptism, reconciliation, Confirmation, Communion, Matrimony or Holy Order, and anointing of sickness. We must partake in reconciliation and Eucharist often as we can.

Love Ourselves

We must love ourselves first. How can we love other if we don’t love ourselves?

For example, if we can’t ride a bicycle. Can we teach other to ride a bicycle? No. First, we need to learn how to ride bicycle and then we can teach others. We are experienced and we understand what it is like to ride a bicycle. Through our teaching, we can coach better and be more emphatic.

How can we love ourselves?

We must take good care of ourselves. We need to exercise and eat well since our body is the temple of our soul. We need to study and find good educational stimulation for our brain. We must work on accept who we are. We have our own strengths and weaknesses. Understand ourselves will liberate from our burden of society’s norm. Learn to overcome our shortcoming and find the strength in life. This is how we can love ourselves.

Reconciliation is often a first step. God’s forgiveness will remove our burden and bless with his grace. God know we are sinners and we are not perfect. He will always forgive us and give us a renewed life again and again. We must face God that we are sorry for our mistakes and step up to do better with our life.

To love ourselves, we can find goods in others despite their flaws. If we don’t love ourselves and then we will continue to see the problems. Love ourselves change our conscience and perception. This put a better filter in our conscience.

Love Others

To love others, we create a peace on Earth.  When we love each other and it become like a Heaven on Earth. Can you imagine how if everybody learn to love each other. What will our Earth be like? Maybe no war and we become the most productive human being. There maybe will be no thousands page to dictate on how we should live. Our only law is to love other.

Love others reinforce us to find greatness in other. It is not matter of liking others but to serve, to help, to develop, and to cultivate. By love others, we extend our kindness, support, and peace.

How can we love others?

Find time to visit your loved one or someone who is in need such as nurse’s home or prison. Extend your expertise to others who may benefit. Doing uncommon kindness such as phoning your long lost friends and reconnect with them. Make a time to find out name of your building custodial and striking a small talk with him from time to time.  There are countless way to love others. The basic way to love is through emphatic listening, offering assistance, and concerned thoughts.

Live up Jesus’s eight beatitudes are a good place to start. The Jesus’s eight beatitudes when he gave a sermon on the Mt. Sinai are:

• Blessed are the poor in spirit,
  for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are they who mourn,
  for they shall be comforted.
• Blessed are the meek,
  for they shall inherit the earth.
• Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
  for they shall be satisfied.
• Blessed are the merciful,
  for they shall obtain mercy.
• Blessed are the pure of heart,
  for they shall see God.
• Blessed are the peacemakers,
  for they shall be called children of God.
• Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Gospel of St. Matthew 5:3-10

From the Book of Mark

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:28-31)

Jesus never said we must love God or love people.  Jesus said we must love God and Love people.

We will appreciate the deep love when we continue to love God with our entire mind as we would love others and ourselves. We will begin to live a better life in mind, physical, and spirit.

If we practice the 3 ways to love interconnected, we will create a heaven on Earth.

Once again, to love as Jesus’s greatest commandments have showed us that we must love God with our entire mind and love others as ourselves.

The instruction is simple. To love are challenge. We often struggle to understand why God is doing this to us? We have hard time to love those people who did terrible things. Sometime we have difficult time accept who we are. It is tough to love. But, God has promise that we will experience joy and gracious when we love fully. When we love fully, we become better, happy, healthy, and productive.

This Sunday, the December 21, 2008; my parents will mark their 40th anniversary.  I am so blessed to have parents in my life.

Mom and Dad

Let me pull the message I wrote about my parents from my Facebook profile:

My parents, Thomas Vieira and Sharon Vieira.

They are the architect of my life. They gave me the strong foundation that I can enable my journey in exploring the life.

They are amazing people. They beat the almost impossible odds. My dad and mom survived the hardship of life. The bag of hardship were homeless, growing up being unappreciated with lack of love, facing the horrible forms of abuse, and have almost no guide in life.

They married when my dad was 17 and my mom was 18. One of their first commitment is that their children will not live their old lifestyle.

Today, my sisters and I are the outcome of their success. We all three graduated from college. It were my parents’ iron-clad goal that we will graduate from college and to live a good life with all their support no matter what.

My parents of 40 years in marriage has served as my role model in building a loving relationship and the driven character of being success in life.

They are always persistent in hope, faith and love.

My parents, Thomas and Sharon, the mast of my life.