Bitterness Begone! A Time For Love

The Holy Family our model of Love
The Holy Family our model of Love
The Holy Family our model of Love

I’ll like to talk about love – agape. The world needs agape more than ever. I see a lack of agape everywhere both online and offline. There is an urgent need for agape in our actions and inactions. Agape is the air we should be breathing. This world and our very existence depend on apape and God is agape as the Scriptures remind us. The many bitterness we find around us testifies of the need for agape. The Gospel of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ is all about agape, agape in the right sense.

Enjoy some of my favourite quotes on agape. Thank you.

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also. ~1 John 4:7-21 NASB

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. ~1 Corinthians 13:1-13 NASB

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like. ~Saint Augustine of Hippo

Love is the most necessary of all virtues. Love in the person who preaches the word of God is like fire in a musket. If a person were to throw a bullet with his hands, he would hardly make a dent in anything; but if the person takes the same bullet and ignites some gunpowder behind it, it can kill. It is much the same with the word of God. If it is spoken by someone who is filled with the fire of charity- the fire of love of God and neighbor- it will work wonders. ~Saint Anthony Mary Claret

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working, and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves. ~Saint Francis de Sales

My director, Jesus, does not teach me to count my acts, but to do everything for love, to refuse Him nothing, to be pleased when He gives me a chance to prove to Him that I love Him – but all this in peace – in abandonment. ~Saint Therese of Lisieux

The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist. ~Pope Saint Gregory the Great

We can cure physical diseases with medicine but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more who are dying for a little love. Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So spread love everywhere you go. ~Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

It is not hard to obey when we love the one whom we obey. ~Saint Ignatius of Loyola

Jesus is your friend. The Friend. With a human heart, like yours. With loving eyes that wept for Lazarus. And he loves you as much as he loved Lazarus. ~Saint Josemaría Escrivá

Godwin Delali Adadzie is a Catholic living in Ghana, West Africa. A former smoker (Fish smoker now a Vegetarian) but still loves to drink a lot (of water). He attempts to blog at the Fair (HubBlogs with GADEL), the Good (Blessed Virgin our Mother Mary Immaculate), the Bad (GADEL Said What?) and the Ugly (Catholic Fiction: Responding to Myths & Half-Truths)

Godwin Delali Adadzie

Godwin Delali Adadzie

You can call me GADEL. Apologetics and theology are two of my favorite subjects, and you can read some of my work in these areas at Catholic Answers 101. I also care a lot about gun safety. Remember to pray always. Thank you.

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2 thoughts on “Bitterness Begone! A Time For Love”

  1. Sometimes it is a great privilege to be old. I remember Blessed Mother Theresa of Calcutta when she walked this earth. She was a wonderful, generous, loving, feisty woman, tiny and powerful. I remember when she was invited by the Clintons to address a women’s tea in the White House rose garden. It was the social coup of the century. It was covered on live television. Mother told the women that American women are the most privileged in the world, the best cared for and the most respected. Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Gore smiled benevolently until Blessed Mother Theresa told them that, in view of all that, it is incumbent upon American women to protect the precious lives of unborn babies. The smiles froze and the meeting in the rose garden was never, to my knowledge, rebroadcast. Yes, sometimes it is very good to be old.

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