The love of Christ urges us on

Jesus, I want to live your life. Transform me in you, as you did with St. Paul: “Christ lives in me.”Jesus, you thirst for souls and I too want to burn with zeal. Like St. Paul, I want to be inflamed, devoured by your love.Blessed Timothy Giaccardo, 1917

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Paul is a superb writer. He is able to move our hearts deeply when we read about how his passion for Christ consumed and motivated him. “The love of Christ urges us on”: whatever we do, wherever we go, we are surrounded by the love of Christ.

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This love is so powerful, extraordinary and compelling that we cannot resist it; when we truly encounter it, we have no choice but to accept it.

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I “I am hard pressed between two (things): my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you” (Phil. 1:23).

“I am hard pressed,” that is, I cannot escape; my experience of Christ was so profound that I am not able to think of anything but his love or do anything without it. I am absolutely sure that I am surrounded, embraced by Jesus, who loves me.

T The Secret of Love

Love can be understood only instinctively. Paul says the secret of God’s love is the presence of his Spirit within us, enabling us to experience, almost by osmosis, how much the Father loves us.

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Co. 13:7).

AA Lover’s Hymn

“What are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

I “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rm. 8:38-39)

AA Life Guided by Love

Paul’s entire life was guided and inspired by love.

“One night (in Troas), Paul had a vision: a Macedonian appeared and kept urging him in these words: ‘Come across to Macedonia and help us.’ Once he had seen this vision we sought passage to Macedonia at once, convinced that God had called us to bring them the good news” (Acts 16:9-10).

I In Corinth, the Lord himself spoke to Paul:

“One night the Lord said to Paul in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no one will lay a hand on you to harm you, for there are many in this city who are my people” (Acts 18:9-10).

PPaul had another vision in Jerusalem:

“The next night, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘Courage! You have borne witness for me in Jerusalem, now you must do the same in Rome’” (Acts 23:11).

PPaul knew how to channel all the sentiments of his exquisitely tender heart into the wholehearted offering of himself to Christ the Lord.

C“Christ lives in me”

Speaking about his spiritual experience, the Apostle could say: “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Ga. 2:20).

Paul uses stupendous words to describe his mystical union with Christ and his efforts to participate in this relationship to an ever-greater degree. He wants to reach the point of “knowing the resurrection of Christ,” that is, of personally experiencing not so much the virtue of God who raised his Son from the dead as the sanctifying virtue of the humanity of Christ, acquired at the moment of his resurrection.

A A slow reading of the passage of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians in which he speaks about the gratuitousness of divine love can help us relive the deep emotion, tenderness and gratitude the Apostle experienced when faced with such a gift:

“We were by nature children of wrath…but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, brought us to life with Christ” (Eph. 2:3-5, 7).

F“For me, life is Christ and death is a positive gain” (Phil. 1:21).

Paul is not speaking about living in Christ, but about living the very life of Christ.

“May Jesus alone live in every-thing.” It is not enough to say, ‘I live with Christ.’ He himself must be the main actor and director of our life. He must be everything and be in everything, always.” (J. Alberione)

D Do we let Christ live in us? Do we throw him out of our life? Do we forget about him? Do we feel that he is in us and that it is he who is prompting us to speak, move and act, to give up something because it displeases him or accept something else because it pleases him? “May Christ truly live in me”: that is, may I disappear. May it be he alone who lives at all times because this is the mystery of Christ: the fact that he is the head of the Body and we are its members. (J. Alberione)

H “How beautiful is our devotion when this happens and how much easier it is to work, even in the most difficult circumstances. How much easier it is to master our senses and passions and direct them to God. We are able to rise above our human nature. We are moved by God and we feel that our works are divine because the thought that guides us is that of Jesus Christ; the movement we feel within us is the movement of love, the movement of Jesus Christ, just as the will expressed is that of Jesus Christ. We are extensions of him. We are his members.” (J. Alberione)