Put A Little Love In It

Our priest told a story today about a nun who came to talk to his seminary class. Without going into all the details, it boiled down to this: She had told someone who was having a difficult time to "Put a Little Love in it". The woman to whom the advice was directed thought it seemed simplistic - but tried it ... and it worked.

So the nun now passed the advice on to the seminarians, and today, Father Jim passed it onto us.

Put A Little Love In It.

It would make a nice inspirational poster.

And it's also very good advice.

Today's Gospel reminds us once again of Jesus' new commandment to us. "To love one another." But it's not really new. It's more of a summary of the original ten.

A couple of weeks ago as I wrapped up teaching the ten commandments to my fourth grade CCD class I told them that all ten could be summed up in one word. Did they know what that word was?

Law?

No.

Commandment?

No.

It's Love I told them. It's as simple as that: Love.

Because if you love someone you don't want to do bad things to them. You don't want to lie about them or steal from them, or hurt them in anyway. If something good happens to them you are happy - not jealous. Basically, if you are acting in love you don't need someone to remind you of what the ten commandments are because you will automatically do the right thing.

But what about all those other people. The ones who cut you off in traffic, the teachers who give homework over vacation breaks, the friend who stops being a friend. Well, Jesus didn't make exceptions. We have to love them too. But since that is a bit harder, we do have those rules: even if we don't feel love we still need to not kill, not lie, not steal. We have to act in love even if we don't feel love.

And that brings us back to the advice Father Jim shared with us today. Put a little love in it and you can't go wrong.