“Even if our heart lacks love, it longs for love” (St. Francis de Sales).
St. Francis de Sales was a very sensitive spiritual guide who always knew how to encourage a soul and build on the good he found in it, especially when it was in darkness. Thus, today’s phrase can also serve as a consolation and speak to us in the midst of our inner darkness, when we feel incapable of loving and our heart seems closed in on itself.
Even though we may sometimes feel that we do not even desire to love God and our neighbor, our Heavenly Father opens up the possibility for us to tell Him that, at least with our will, we want to love Him. And when we feel incapable of even taking this step, we can still cry out or simply groan from the depths of our being: “Lord, help me to love!” Such an act, which we may even have to perform against all our inner resistance, will open a small crack in the door to our Father’s heart—the heart that overflows with indescribable love for all people.
This love is so essential that, at the twilight of our lives, we will be judged according to it. Every act of love we perform will be credited to us as merit, and in the same way, we will have to give an account for every opportunity in which we could have loved and did not.
If, by God’s grace, we already love Him, we must ask the Heavenly Father to touch those who do not yet know Him with a ray of his love and to show us all the possible ways to love even more.