God’s love, to which every human being is drawn, is a creative force originating in The One who is eternal and perfectly good. Love is the source of eternal life and contains actual power beyond all imagining.
To appreciate the power of love, let’s begin with something lesser and more tangible that mankind has come to understand: nuclear energy. When Einstein formulated his mass-energy conversion, it only took mankind a short while to grasp its potential for destruction in the form of nuclear weapons. With only a few kilograms of material, a bomb that can destroy an entire city can easily be constructed. This happens because each atom contains so much energy, that when released efficiently, the breaking of the bonds between the elementary particles releases tremendous destructive force.
Let’s keep this in mind as we consider the size of a human body. Imagine a human being whose mass is 60 kg. If Einstein’s calculations were to be applied to the energy contained in that human being, there would be enough destructive potential in that single person to destroy 30 cities! But consider the fact that it takes much more energy to create something than to destroy it. How much energy does it take for God to give life to that single body? This is just the energy for one person! God is currently keeping 7 billion of us alive! Every breath we take is a tangible miracle of God’s creative will sustaining our life.
We are alive because God’s love is so powerful that He has actually loved us into existence, and His love is required for every heartbeat and every breath in every person.
But let’s take a moment and imagine a hypothetical miracle: suppose God suddenly appeared on television and created a beautiful tree in the middle of a desert, and everyone in the world instantly knew that tree was specially created by God as a gift for mankind. What would happen? Naturally everyone in the world would reverence the tree, make every effort to visit the tree, write about the tree, maintain pictures of the tree, pray about the tree, etc. It would be absolutely unthinkable to ignore the tree, insult the tree or try to destroy it. It would be considered a visible sign of God’s miraculous and creative presence in the world. But that’s just one tree. What about the billions of people who are alive and the billions who preceded them? With what reverence would they be treated if everyone had the same clarity about their origins as with the hypothetical tree?
Understanding, then, the love with which we are created, and with our natural understanding of how wonderful it is to share love with other human beings, consider how wonderful and powerful God’s 1st commandment truly is! Using the image of the tree as a metaphor, fix your gaze on another human being, and allow God’s love to fill your heart with love for that person. Does that love sit still or travel? Of course you know the answer: your love both traverses and transcends space and time to reach that human being, and when that person becomes aware of it, both of you begin to wake up to how life-giving that love really is. Both of you, in that instant, tap into the infinitely good eternal origins you both share in God, and the happiness resulting from the interaction has no measure.
Let’s go further and adore the Eucharist, which is God Himself. What is that exchange like between you and God? What happens as you worthily consume that Eucharist? What is the measure of your happiness now? How much more powerfully does the Eucharist move from you to others as you look upon them with the love God has mercifully granted you? This is the holy marriage between Jesus and the Mystical Bride of Christ (us).
Let’s go still further and move into the realm of Holy Matrimony. A man and woman, living graceful and loving lives fed by the Holy Eucharist, become Eucharist to each other as they constantly draw upon the life-giving power of God as their source. They feed each other in this way in a way that eternally satisfies, and it is God’s creative energy that powers their procreation of children in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. What a miracle such a marriage is! Such joy, rooted in the eternity of Heaven, is within our grasp! This is what we have so much to be thankful for. Imagine such a perfect marriage and holy family: that is a manifestation of the beautiful and miraculous tree discussed earlier, and is a miraculous transformation of the tree to which Jesus lovingly ascended in Calvary.
The Unknown Road 