I found this note while browsing through Facebook. You can view the actual note
here. It is such a timely message at this time when I have just made one of the biggest decisions in my life. I just wanted to share this with you in the hopes that you might find it useful too.
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In one of his books, Cardinal Danielou says that “Love should not be unilateral, but should entail a real reciprocity. Love consists as much in receiving as it does in giving.” I find that a rather perceptive insight, and I think it is borne out by experience. We have been taught from the time that we were little kids that love means giving and sharing. That’s true. We have to share what we have with those we love. And so we teach our children to share their candy with their brothers and sisters. We teach them to be generous with their friends.
But I think that sometimes it is a greater act of love to accept graciously and thankfully when those we love give something to us. We really can’t give anything to God, you know. He is everything and has everything. So how can we love Him? If love consisted only in giving, we wouldn’t be able to love God at all. But we do love Him when we accept what He gives us and say, “Thank you.” One way to love is to give to those we love. But the other, perhaps greater, act of love, is to receive. When we have them both—giving and receiving in love—we have Danielou’s reciprocity, the perfection of love.
In most human relationships, one gives a little more than the other, and one, perhaps, receives a little more. Because of our human nature, our background and our individual needs, there is always that human inequality in giving and receiving love. A perfectly mutual and reciprocal love is a very rare gift. Imagine what love would be like if each both gave and received a hundred percent! But St. Augustine says that kind of perfect love exists only in God, where each Person in the Trinity gives and receives the perfection of love.
It’s much easier for most of us to give love than to receive it. That may sound strange, but I think it is true. When we give love, we are in control. We can pick the person to love, we can decide how to love, how much to love, and when to love. But when we receive love, we are no longer in control. We have to let the other person decide to love or not, or how much to love. All we can do is accept the love that is offered. To a certain extent we are helpless, and that is much, much harder.
Danielou says there is a certain superiority when we love others, and a certain helplessness when others love us. We can choose those we want to love, but we cannot always choose those who love us. I think that is one of the most beautiful things in the world—and also one of the hardest.
I often ask students on retreat whether it is harder to love or to be loved. Most of them answer that it is harder to love, it is harder to give. Maybe that is because they just concentrate on the giving part of love. But some of the more thoughtful students think about if for awhile and then answer that it is much harder to be loved, because it is much harder to receive.
To let another person love you—really love you—is a very hard thing to do. Not to tell him how to love you, or when or where, but just to accept his love in the way he wants to give it. I think that’s why so many of us fight God sometimes. We want Him to love us in our way and not His. We want Him to do this or that for us because He loves us. We can’t sit back and accept His love in the way He wants to give it to us. I think that is why sometimes we fight with those we love, too. We want them to love us in our way, and when they don’t do that, we get angry with them. We can’t understand their love sometimes because it’s not “My Way.”
One of the greatest joys you can give anyone is to show him that you expect something from him, that he has something to contribute to you, to teach and reveal to you, to share with you. “You have something to give to me in love, and I need what you can give to me.” That’s not giving love. That’s accepting love which can, in itself, become the most beautiful surrender of love that exists.
Many people complain that they give so much and they never get anything in return. Part of the reason is, perhaps, that they have never learned how to accept love. One of the lines I remember from a romantic movie many years ago was when the man said to the woman: “Please stop arguing and talking so much. Just let me love you!” I think God says the same thing to us.
