That is the title to today’s selection from a book called Reflections for Ragamuffins by Brennan Manning, the author of Ragamuffin Gospel (which if you haven’t read you might want to.  It changed my life.)  It seemed to line up well with the last set of thoughts, so I thought I’d share it.

 Religious formation often focused on abstractions, interpersonal ethics and fixed formulae because no one believed that ‘one learns to love God by loving men.”  The apostle Paul was not taken seriously: “Help carry one another’s burdens; in that way you fulfill the law of Christ”.  Community life was not perceived as a radical imitation of the Blessed Trinity who is dialogue, spontaneous love and community.  The light of John the Evangelist illumines the darknes: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love each other, Go dlives in us and his love is made complete in us.” (1 John 4:12).  An arresting thesis!  To love one another means that the love of God has reached full growth in us.  “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.  Then your reward will be great,a nd you will be sons of the Most High, because He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.  Be merciful,  just as your Father is merciful” Luke 6:35-36

In my own study time, I am parked in 1 John 4:7-21.  It reads a little different in the literal Greek (which I don’t read, just a translation).  I am curious as to what people think this passage means and what it means to ‘love one another’ in real time.