Sacramentum caritatis

My Bangkok

One day last week, I was on the bus and passed directly by these electricity workers, facing what I would identify as an insurmountable challenge of working with the jumbled mess of power cables, above them.  How do they know which ones to fix or change?   Mind boggling!  Yet despite, all chaos facing them, they do achieve their work, and so electrity remains connected to the neighbourhood.    

  

These days, our world is looking more and more chaotic, like those jumbled power lines in My Bangkok.  On top of wars, food shortages, rising energy prices, displaced peoples, we are seeing more and more catastrophic, natural disasters.  The list goes on.  So we can readily identify that our world is experiencing a heightened level of distress, for it knows too much death, destruction, injustice and suffering.  In too many people's lives, chaos reigns.  Despite all, this is no reason to despair, for life continues; for love is ever shared; for hope is real.    

This is not empty optimism, for it is based on the mystery of who God is with us.  God is love.  God is here.  God gives life to all our world, to all humanity, in every situation.  This is the very essence of God and of who we are, as created by a God of life and love.   It is in the midst of our distressed world that we find and know God, for this is where God has chosen to be.      

We know this reality as we give, share and receive love; not a shallow love, but love based on the divine mystery alive and real in our midst.  Knowing this, we are called to live life with the eyes of God.  Our love shows forth God with us; God who is our most intimate companion in life, through it all.  Our acts of love, our being kind and wise in treating others, all this matters, for  thus we show forth the love of God that is much deeper.  God's love can never be conquered.   

Sacramentum caritatis - our human acts of love are a sacred sign of a living and loving God with us.