Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? (Rom 8:35)
Above all, we must clarify what is the love of Christ, in order to avoid being separated from Him. Our founder, in one of his meditations, answers this question with various Biblical passages, namely:
“For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” (1 John 5:3)
“Geater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
“’Do you love me more than these?’...Jesus said to him ‘Feed my lambs.’” (John 21:15)
So, from these passages, we have seen that in a certain concrete way, the love of God is OBSERVING HIS COMMANDMENTS, and GIVING LIFE TO OTHERS, and dedicating ourselves to FEEDING HIS LAMBS. What does all this have to do with it? Tribulations? The sword? I guess most of the time it doesn't get that far.
How many times are you told to love God, but you do not try to live what He commands? How many times do you say that you love God, but you do not make yourself available to renounce your own will to do His? How many times do you say to love God buy you don’t do anything to help other souls to arrive in Paradise? As St. John says: “Little children, let us not love in word and speech but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).
Who or what can separate us from the love of God?
It’s up to each one of us to respond.
Sr. CMC