From my Bulletin Column

Some years ago, there was a mass shooting in a Synagogue Church in Pittsburgh, PA. This gunman took away the innocent lives of eleven people and six others injured. This gunman contaminated the fresh love air that the faithful came to breathe by firing the bullet of hatred. It is not about what is love but where is it that love breathes the fresh air of love for survival.

As a refugee, I came to seek freedom in a blessed land called America, I thank God and this country for allowing me and many other refugees to have a chance to breathe this freedom air. Is it all about freedom in this blessed land, I asked myself. In searching for the answer, the words on the dollar bills that captured my attention saying, “In God We Trust.” Perhaps, in God, we find the true freedom that we all breathe and share. Therefore, what is not in God will contaminate the air that we all share and breathe. So then, what is not in God?

“Deus caritas est” or “God is Love,” an encyclical in 2005 written by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. By the title alone, one can say that without God, there is no love; and without love, there is no God. In addition, all the laws of the Catholic Church condense into the two great commandments given by the Lord Jesus Christ reported in today’s Gospel saying, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. [and] You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” It is very clear then to love the Lord with all one’s whole human being and to love the neighbor as oneself is nothing more than LOVE itself.



To hurt our neighbor is not of love, and what is not of love is not of God. If we cannot love our neighbor whom we can see and experience with our five senses, how can we love God whom we cannot even see nor experience with our five senses? To learn to love God, then, to learn to love one another first; and to learn to know God is to learn to love. The first step in learning to love is to let go of what is hatred and anger toward others. Is there any anger and hatred that we might hold against someone we know or love? What is love for you? The decision is yours.