On this day — as throughout this month — we celebrate true love. Not that mockery of love, that meaningless “love is love” slogan, which is being flaunted at Dodger Stadium this evening. Today, Catholic Christians celebrate the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and during the whole month of June we focus on that symbol of his divine love manifested through his humanity. God is love, and Jesus, who is both God and man, reveals to us the true nature of divine and human love.
Jesus explains the true nature of love when he enjoins us to love God and neighbor by following his Commandments: Love is an act of the will — love is a choice. We come to know what choices constitute loving behavior not only through Jesus’s teachings but also through the natural light of reason in every human heart. It’s simply reasonable, it’s just common sense, that we should not kill people, not sleep with other people’s spouses, not lie. Some choices concretely show love, and others don’t. Not every choice is good. “Love” is not always love — unless it means choosing what is true and good.
True love, then, is not a momentary passion or feeling: We prove we are loving persons by choosing acts of love often despite what we feel. Jesus not only teaches us that, but models it for us, as we see in His passion and death on the Cross: “Greater love no man has, than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus didn’t feel like undergoing his passion and death, but he chose to in spite of what he felt, to love us, and to show us that love is a choice.
That is why Jesus can even command us to “love your enemies, and do good to them” (Luke 6:35). Nobody feels like loving those who treat us badly. To do so means choosing to “love the sinner but hate the sin,” as the saying goes. That is what Jesus did, and what Christians strive to do: Precisely because we love everyone — no exceptions — and so want what’s best for them, we hate their sin — but still love them in spite of it.
When children misbehave, parents still love their children — but hate the misbehavior. In the same way, when Christians see and denounce sinful behavior or the promotion of evil, they hate the misbehavior, not those who are misbehaving. And when Christians are subsequently unfairly labeled as hateful, we still love those who say so. As Pope St. John XXIII said: “There are many enemies of the Church — but, of course, the Church has no enemies.” That echoes Jesus’s command: “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:28)
During this day and month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we take pride in Jesus’s — in his Church’s — teaching on the true nature of love, and we recommit ourselves to doing our best to follow his example.