Why is it so difficult to love?
We sing of love.
There are so many definitions of love.
Many different kinds of love.
Yet Jesus gives a very specific command, that we love one another as he has loved us.
And he shows it by washing the feet of the disciples.
A humbling act, a serving act, a caring act.
Why is it so difficult to love?
I suppose because it means we have to give up something, perhaps everything, losing our self, losing control, losing life, losing all the things we may have looked forward to or longed for, or worked for, changing our plans…
There is a conversion of sorts, a shifting from me and mine toward you and yours, a change in attention and focus, in priority.
I am no longer so much interested in my preferences and needs as I am in yours. And when two or more people share this what happens is a wonderful and ludicrous picture of inefficiency, each submitting out of reverence to each other.
I no longer relate to someone as a means to my needs and achievement, suddenly you become the great mystery for me to explore and adore.
And somehow in losing ourselves in this love of others and love of God, we become even more ourselves; we are even more free than before.
C.S. Lewis has a wonderful picture of high churchmen and low churchman, switching places out of respect for each other. The results are that the high churchmen act like low churchmen out of concern for tempting the low churchmen to idolatry. The low churchmen act like high churchmen out of concern for making them indignant over perceived irreverence. Each goes out of their way out of love for the other, rather than insisting on their own perspective and tradition, because the greater overarching tradition and commandment is love.
Love is a strange adventure, and if we take it, there is no telling where it goes.
The Gospel shows us that it leads even to betrayal this night, and to arrest, and tomorrow to death on the cross, this is part of the adventure, but then come Sunday, the big surprise, that love is the only thing that lasts, that love is stronger than death, and that everything else is simply a waste of time.
Yet, even after having said all that:
Why is it so hard to love?