Love is.

No matter how we define love, by the end of the day, we're always going to find ourselves faced with a love that requires a leap of faith, an act of self-emptying, and a radical openness to the newness that it brings into our lives. The road of our lives don't become easier; the crosses we bear don't get lighter. Love isn't a test that begins and one day ends. Nevertheless, love does something to each and everyone of us that makes life worth living. Correction -- that makes it possible to live at all.

I'd like to believe that this world wants to find itself in love for it is a powerful and wonderful thing to be. Ironically enough, we find ourselves surrounded by all kinds of poverty. Each and everyone of us, if we haven't already, will feel robbed, cheated, and taken advantage of. Our hurts can often lead us to become poor in sincerity, in magnanimity, in joy, in hopefulness, in faith -- in life. We restlessly strive to find the love that will heal us, renew us, and make us brave enough to love again, but instead, we often find ourselves settling for what will distract us from experiencing this hunger, this need. 

We live extremely fast-paced lives. We somehow convince ourselves that loving others is no longer worth it. We don't have time except for ourselves. We don't give enough because we are always feeling like we're in need of something. We focus so much on ourselves that we become unaware of the need of this world for love, gentleness, and kindness. This world is noisy, and we like that. We like that because, truth be told, sometimes the truth about ourselves can scare us. We don't know it, but we separate ourselves from our need to love and it kills us. It destroys everything that is fundamentally human about us.

When we really listen to the true needs of our hearts, we will hear its cry for what is real. The heart doesn't just need affection, it needs love that is faithful to the end. It doesn't just need sentimentality, it needs sense; it needs wisdom and prudence to find authentic peace. The heart doesn't just need to be led by pure thoughts, it needs bodily actions that follow. Our true poverty is our hunger to not just be loved, but to be vulnerable, to be exposed in the light of the truth of our beings and be loved despite of it. Knowing this -- all of this and more -- scares us because sometimes we don't feel that our hearts are worthy of more than the things we settle for. We don't feel that we are capable of such greatness. Of infinite mercy when we fail. 

In the moments that loving seems most foolish, humiliating, and even scary, we have to hold on to our desire to love - to give of ourselves- even tighter. The heart has to constantly fight from unbecoming its true self. Therefore, we must also always remember that this is a battle worth dying for. And with every occasion of love, we will be dying to ourselves. In emptying ourselves, we become each other's guides in the rough roads of life; we become each other's Simon because we help carry each other's cross. To love is to live.

Whatever the reason we have for wanting to love and be loved, it is always simply because to love is to simply be. It is the manifestation of the holiness that is our calling -- our destiny. Our need for love to fill our lives transcends us all, but we have to believe that love is real; and when we love, it impacts us here and now.