Learning To Love Like They Do In Heaven

 

I’ve been thinking lately about love and how I love others and how they love me.  I’ve been thinking about the restrictions I put on love, who I can love and who I sort of can love and maybe who I should not love, although the latter seems to rub against the grain of my religious teachings.  Perhaps the mystery is how much I can love someone or just exactly how I show my love for another, or out of fear, why I don’t show my love at all.

A recent article about Pope Francis kissing the feet of young women prisoners is an example of how they must love one another in heaven… with no restriction.

I think about when I have loved someone so very dearly here on earth, and they pass to the next journey, they are immediately with those whom they have loved before me.  And I find other people to love, perhaps even as much as I loved them.  What, then, will our love for one another be like when we all gather together in the same “other” place?  Is there enough room in my heart for it all? Someone once said that when we “cross-over” we take with us all the love everyone ever had for us, even those we might never have known or loved.

Jesus had a special way to love people.  And it didn’t matter whether they were men or women or young or old, or sick or healthy, or whatever the difference might have been.  So then we, too, are called to this “Christ-way-to-love.”  Scripture sort of says it is in loving God first that we learn to love others, and ultimately to love ourselves.

This kind of love is how I love my spouse and all my children, my parents, the parents I never knew, the brother and sister I never met.  The love I had for my first best friend or the neighbor who played jacks on the front porch with me when I was a child.  The love of my art teacher who told me never to be afraid to share my feelings, and my grandmother who loved me just because she knew I needed it.  Do we start this love here and now and then fully and fearlessly become that love in heaven?

Whatever this love is, and however we learn to share it with one another, I want it to be a part of my life right now, on this earth, at this moment.  I want to love you like they love one another in heaven… now, so when I get there I’ll know exactly how they do it.