Love requires sacrifice

Fr. Roy Cimagala

WE have to be clear about this. Love will always require sacrifice. Where there is no sacrifice, there cannot be love. Love grows only to the extent that we are willing to make sacrifices.

Without sacrifice, we sooner or later will be swallowed up by our own egoism, our own selfishness.

And this selfishness can take the form of laziness, attachment to certain things to the point of self-absorption, etc. We have to be ready to do battle against these anomalous tendencies of ours.

We should always remember that the very essence of love is self-giving. In love, the lover needs to lose himself in his beloved. He has to be identified with his beloved. And this will always involve self-denial.

The self-giving and losing that love requires would actually enrich the person in his dignity. This way of loving conforms to what Christ himself said: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 16,25)

That’s why Christ himself said that if anyone wants to follow him, that person has to deny himself and, in fact, should carry the cross also. Otherwise, he cannot love. And true love is personified in Christ himself.

In other words, we can only love truly when we identify ourselves with Christ who precisely commanded us to love one another as he himself has loved us. We have to understand that only in Christ would we manage to keep our love alive and vibrant, always fresh, new and creative. It’s a love that is open to anything, and willing to go through all the challenges, trials, difficulties, etc.

To be sure, Christ is not sparing in inspiring us with his love and in sharing his love with us. If we bother to be open ourselves to him, to love the way Christ has loved us should not be a problem. Christ makes himself and his ways of loving readily available to us. That is why we need to actively look for him, as he himself told us. “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find…” (Mt 7,7)

We need to see to it that everyday we pattern our love after Christ’s love for us that is so full of sacrifice that it went to the extent of offering his life for us. We can do this if everyday, we would always look for opportunities to makes sacrifices by ways of serving others the way they need to be served, unafraid of the inconveniences involved.

We should never forget to deny ourselves in something everyday if we want to keep our love alive. That self-denial should be inspired by Christ’s example. It should not be done simply for its own sake, for the sake only of self-denial. That would dehumanize us. This distinction between a Christ-inspired self-denial and a self-denial that is only for its own sake is important.

When we find something required by love hard to do, all we need to do is to go to Christ, asking for his help, for his grace. Thus, difficulties should be understood as an invitation to go to Christ, not to ignore him and spend our time brooding uselessly.

It would greatly help if we meditate on the very passion and death of Christ so that we can appreciate the necessity of sacrifice in loving. There Christ shows us how to love by suffering in obedience to his Father’s will. There we will find the true meaning of suffering and sacrifice and their intimate relation to love.