No Greater Love/Know Greater Love
(A Reflection on Holy Week, Parenthood, and The True Meaning of Love)
By: Michael Pavano
"The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:14
"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that all who believe in Him may not die but have everlasting life." John 3:16
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13
I have to begin this reflection by saying that like so many, I give my heartfelt thanks to all of those that are on the front lines of this pandemic, the doctors, the nurses, the grocery workers, police officers, and so many others that are working hard to keep us safe and healthy. Thank you all. You are living out 1 John: chapter 3 verse 18: "My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action."
I've been reflecting often on this as we near the end of Lent and the beginning of the celebration of Easter. I've been among those that are not working right now, but for me in so many ways it has been a rich blessing. I'm able to stay home and spend more time with my family while removing any chance of them being exposed to the virus. During this time, it has been in the quiet moments when God has spoken to me the most. Once again one of those moments occurred in an ordinary interaction with Daniel.
I love Daniel so much and tell him everyday, but I often wonder how he can understand love when he doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Currently, Daniel is obsessed with animals of all kinds. He has baby sharks, barnyard animals, and now a whole new group of animals from a Noah's Ark play set. He loves it so much. Daniel will just sit there and interact with them. I can see his beautiful imagination forming and running wild. But as fun as it is to watch him, I adore engaging with him in a way where I can enter his little world and relate to him in a way that shows him I’m there and I care even for the little things in his life.
I guess I learned this from my mother. Growing up, I would keep her busy for hours with my stories and games. I remember being in the living room having her sit down and demonstrating for her a whole battle scene I had developed in my mind filled with characters and sequences I'm sure in reality she cared little about, but being my mother, she cared very much for it because it was important to me.
In my sorrows, my mom and my dad too would be there. Though they may not have directly experienced my sorrows like suffering with debilitating anxiety, I knew they desired to understand them and would always be there with me through them. When I would come down with a killer migraine or feel at my lowest my mother would repeat a phrase to me that has always stayed with me, “I wish I could take away your pain and make it my own."
I trust my mother because she has always spoken those words with such sincerity and she lives by what she speaks. I know how she has loved me as a mother who deeply loves her son.
Brandy and I repeated the same phrase when we saw Daniel suffering in the hospital in the first couple of months of his life. We desperately desired to take those tubes out of his little chest and those needles out of his tiny arms and take them on ourselves. We couldn’t leave him; we wouldn’t leave him, and thankfully we were in a position where we didn’t have to leave. It was then we understood that in reality there is no greater love than that of a person putting another first and giving everything even if it costs them their own life for the benefit of the other. That is the love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
God desired from the beginning to have a deeply profound relationship with His creation, but that relationship was severed when humanity chose to turn away from the ways of God and toward the ways of the broken world. However, God in his infinite love and mercy never abandoned humanity. The Bible records the plan of salvation God had set for us from that very beginning reaching its grand climax with the life, death, and Resurrection of His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
And how did God choose to save us? Did He choose to stay up in Heaven and remain beyond our understanding? No, He came down as flesh to enter into a deeply powerful relationship with us by becoming like us to experience what we experienced, to teach us the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and then to die by our very hands taking on our pains, our sorrows, and our sins upon Himself to set us free.
I want to enter Daniel’s little world to show him that I care and that I understand, to teach him the important things of life and to show him how I love him. Fortunately for me, I don’t have to travel far to reach my child. Jesus came down from His Heavenly throne to become human like us to experience everything we experience, the joys and the sorrows alike, so we could be bonded closer to our God, our Creator. Through this one act of sacrificial love, God showed us that we could put all of our trust in Him, the way I trust my mom.
Saint Teresa of Calcutta offered some wisdom that shows just how much Jesus wants us to relate to and connect to Him.
“Suffering, pain, sorrow, humiliation, feelings of loneliness, are nothing but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close that He can kiss you… At times you come so close to Jesus on the cross that He can kiss you.”
Jesus’s sacrifice is the true meaning of love. Love is not a feeling; love is an action. Jesus came to earth to unite with us, to free us from the ways of the world, and to teach us how to love. May this Holy Week be one in which we all remember that we are deeply loved by our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so much so, that He came down from Heaven to be like us and to die for us. And that He is still very much with us today in all things. There can be no greater love than the love of God. As we celebrate the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, may we come to know greater love.
Thank you for reading everyone! Have a blessed Easter!
Michael
