Today’s meditation is a follow-up to The Paradox of Love…
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What stands in the way of love?
In his short book The Way to Love, the psychologist and Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello explained,
What is love? Take a look at a rose. Is it possible for the rose to say, “I shall offer my fragrance to good people and withhold it from bad people?” Or can you imagine a lamp that withholds its rays from a wicked person who seeks to walk in its light? It could only do that by ceasing to be a lamp. And observe how helplessly and indiscriminately a tree gives its shade to everyone, good and bad, young and old, high and low; to animals and humans and every living creature—even to the one who seeks to cut it down.
De Mello calls the first quality of love: an indiscriminate character. What gets in the way of loving the world? If one defines love as “willing the good” of others, as St Thomas Aquinas put it. Can or should we focus on loving everyone?
