Character Development

Dr. Lusiana Idawati

January 26, 2012

LOVE

What do you know about love?

What is AGAPE? Unconditional love: the love of God for mankind.

What is PHILIA? Friendship: the love between family and friends.

What is STORGE? Affection: fondness through familiarity, especially between family members.

What is EROS? Romance: the romantic love, "being in love."

Who is this person?

 Born in Macedonia, on August 26, 1910. At the age of twelve, she felt strongly the call of God. At the age of eighteen she left her parental home and joined the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns with missions in India. From 1931 to 1948 she taught at St. Mary's High School in Calcutta. In 1948 she left the convent and devoted herself to working among the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. On October 7, 1950 she received permission from the Holy See to start her own order, "The Missionaries of Charity".

Source: Mother Teresa, No Greater Love, eds. Becky Benenate and Joseph Durepos, 1995, Novato: New World Library, 2001.

What is Love?
Love is a fruit, in season at all times and within the reach of every hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set.
(Mother Teresa, No Greater Love, 22)

Genuine Love = Extraordinary Love?

Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. (NGL, 22)

How Should We Love?

Love each other as God loves each one of you, with an intense and particular love.

Be kind to each other. It is better to commit faults with gentleness than to work miracles with unkindness.
(NGL, 27)

How Should We Love?

True love is love that causes us pain, that hurts, and yet brings us joy. This is why we must pray to God and ask Him to give us the courage to love. (NGL, 27)

But
My life is miserable ... Nobody loves me, not even my parents ... I hate him, he always gives me troubles ... I don't know how to love if I don't feel that I love that person ...

(NGL, 32)

So .... How Can I Love?

In order for us to be able to love, we need to have faith, because:
faith is love in action; and love in action is service.

(NGL, 32)

GOD IS LOVE
Where God is, there is love; and where there is love, there always is an openness to serve. We have a great deal of worth in the eyes of God.
(NGL, 25, 29)

GOD IS LOVE
We too often focus only on the negative aspect of life - on what is bad. If we were more willing to see the good and the beautiful things that surround us, we would be able to transform our families. Peace and war starts within one's own home. If we really want peace for the world, let us start by loving one another within our families. (NGL, 26)

But Who Am I to Change the World?

We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved. (NGL, 29)

But Who Am I to Change the World?

Always be faithful in little things, for in them our strength lies. To God nothing is little. We must deliberately renounce all desires to see the fruit of our labor, doing all we can as best we can, leaving the rest in the hands of God. What matters is the gift of yourself, the degree of love that you put into each one of your actions. (NGL, 30)

Salvador Dali, "Christ of St. John of the Cross"

St. John of the Cross, "Crucifixion"

At the end of our life, we shall be judged by love.

- SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS

Leo Tolstoy, "Where Love Is, God Is," 1885