REFLECTIONS

"Loving Like the Samaritan"

To employ a geometric image: When self is the center of existence, we can arrange the people around us in circles; some are intimate, while others are only casual friends; others in the outermost circle are strangers. We tend to see them in terms of their ability to make us· feel happy or to be useful, or as obstacles to us. From this standpoint, the commandment Love your neighbor, or Love all men, seems totally unreal. Even those dearest to us reveal themselves progressively as riddled with so many unlovable features that we sometimes cannot stand to be with them- and these are the ones we love most!

But if we fall in love with Christ, then he becomes our center. We love him with our whole heart and, wanting to share all his experiences, we soon realize that all people are viewed by him with love. He sees their unlovable qualities, and knows that they can be converted into lovable ones. Would he have created them if he did not love them? The lover of Christ becomes filled with wonder at this idea: Every person in the world is to God someone unique and worthy of being. So, despite all that people do in their self-conceit which conceals their true beauty, he struggles in faith to find their lovable qualities. In some cases he may have an immediate intuition of what is lovable in another person, and his own love will flow spontaneously. But usually, no matter how much he tries, he cannot by himself see them; so he must return to the source of that person's being, Christ, begging him to make manifest what he sees and to give him that love-sight which will replace the blindness caused by many psychological factors. The ways of the world have taught us that to be is to fear .... But Christianity tells us that to be is to love, since God, who is the apex of being, is love. So it is in him that we will learn to love all that he has made and all that he loves.

The more a person genuinely strives to love God with his whole heart, the more he will be transformed ... into a human manifestation of Christ's love for all men. If this is not evident in most Christians, it is not because they love God to the exclusion of neighbor but because their love of God is still feeble. It is in the lives of the saints that we can see how divine love inspires heroic love of neighbor in a concrete and visible form.

RONDA CHERVIN 
Ronda Chervin is a convert from Judaism, professor of philosophy and theology,    and author of over fifty books.