Love finds its critical element in a union. All kinds of love desire union. And all unions necessarily include association or being together. Thus, human love reaches its ultimate expression in marital love – A man and his wife become one flesh. If someone claims he is in love with a person but does not want to be always with the person, we will think his love is not perfect. It happens to most of us. We love our families. However, we find it is often challenging to be with them. During this pandemic, the divorce rate went up. People find it is stressful to spend more time with families due to lockdowns. If our love were perfect, we should have rejoiced over these lockdowns. On the opposite, these lockdowns have revealed how much imperfect our love is.

As for love for God, we wonder in what ways we may love him. Jesus tells us to love our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. It is a tall order. We might question ourselves if we cannot love even our blood families perfectly how we can love God so perfectly, whom we cannot see or touch. This commandment of love for God sounds too much for humans.

Nevertheless, I believe the same principle of love is applied in love for God. We express our love for him by the desire to be with him. I am not certain if someone loves God while he chooses not to come to church. I have a reservation to assume that someone loves Jesus if I see the person choosing not to read or listen to the Gospel. It is hard to believe that someone loves God if he ignores prayer life.

One great news about the love for God is this: even if our love for him is far from perfection, he gladly accepts our love because his love for us is perfect. Human love is always relative. Often, our love is not accepted. Too many misunderstandings darken our hearts. But we do not have to worry about these at all regarding love for God. Even when we are not faithful, our Lord is faithful in his love for us. In a sense, it is easier to love God than to love humans.