Jesus King of Love Series - Love is Not Loved!

Respect is a manifestation of love, and not a matter of etiquette, at any rate with Jesus. By His explicit will, respect is not a keeping at a distance, since He annihilated distance by His Incarnation and in the Eucharist. But in so doing He exacted, nevertheless, an adoration more complete and more perfect than that which the Jews rendered him trembling at a distance. How many Christians there are whose baptism is but skin-deep, who in their souls are Jews, and live in a state of exaggerated fear: who if Jesus should speak and say to them "Filioli," "My little children," or "Amici mei," "My friends, would die not of emotion and love but of terror! As for me, I can but say over and over again: "Let Moses and all the prophets be silent; let them hold their peace, however sweet sounding their voices they do not impress me, for my soul yearns to hear but Thee, Jesus, Who hast the words of eternal life and of love. Let me hear Thy voice, that I may preach Thee, the true Jesus, the Love of loves, the Son of God and the Son of Mary."

I remember a gentleman who considered himself to be a good Catholic saying to me: "What! expose in my room an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus? Never, Father! What a want of respect! It would be the height of absurdity!" What would that bright specimen of a Catholic have done if he had seen with his own eyes the King of Kings conversing with sinners, seeking the confidence and intimacy of publicans and of so many other people by no means respectable or distinguished? This is but disguised human respect and hidden pride. As if the Jesus, whom the bride and bridegroom of Cana invited to preside at their wedding feast, could not feel Himself honoured, and in His place, in the drawing room of a Christian family. Is He not the King of Kings? (Apoc. xvii, 14; xix, 16) How sad and true it is to say that after twenty centuries of Christianity this "Love is not loved"! We do not sufficiently preach the love Jesus Christ, and yet this charity is not weak sentimentality. It is a love full of fire and life.

And all this comes, in part at least, from people not reading, still less meditating on the Gospel, in every page of which Our Lord's desire for familiar intimacy with man is clearly expressed. Do you think they were afraid of Jesus, those little ones of Galilee who threw themselves into His arms, were fascinated by His look and rested on His Heart? When they were dragged from Him by force how quickly they returned to Him, attracted as by a magnet to the bosom of the Master. He can never be known, and loved with divine passion, if our faith and piety do not lead us to live in close intimacy with Him. How can we love Him with a holy and delicious rapture when we see but a distant and distorted image of Him. On the contrary, who is there who having once seen His beauty will not hold all else as dull and miserable?

Excerpt from Jesus The King of Love - by Father Mateo