Day 10: The Healing Power of Love

IT says in First John:

We love, because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

This retreat is happening because God loves you. The sometimes hard truths you are facing are because God loves you. The healing and liberation you’re beginning to experience is because God loves you. He loved you first. He will not stop loving you.

God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. (Rom 5:8)

And so, continue to trust that He will also heal you.

Let’s begin Day 10 of our Healing Retreat: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen…

Come Holy Spirit, open my heart this day to receive the fullness of the Father’s love for me. Help me to rest upon His lap and know His love. Expand my heart to receive His love so that I, in turn, may be a vessel of that same love to the world. Jesus, your Holy Name is healing itself. I love you and adore you and thank you for dying so that I can be healed and saved by Your grace. In your name, Jesus, I pray, amen.

Our Lady often says to “pray with the heart”, not just mutter the words and go through the motions but to mean them “with the heart,” as you would speak with a friend. And so, let’s pray this song with the heart…

You Are Lord

Day to day and night to night proclaim
You are God
A single word, a sole name, they say
And with them I pray

Jesus, Jesus, I love you Jesus
You are Hope
Jesus, Jesus, I love you Jesus
You are Hope

Creation groans, awaits the day when
The sons will be son
And every heart and soul and tongue will sing aloud,
O Lord, You are King

Jesus, Jesus, I love you Jesus
You are King
Jesus, Jesus, I love you Jesus
You are King

And even though the world has forgotten,
living like there’s nothing more than passion, flesh and pleasure
Souls are reaching out for more than temporal
O, Eternity has come to me and set me free, set me free…

I love you Jesus,
You are Lord, my Lord, my Lord, my Lord
Jesus, I love you Jesus
You are Lord

—Mark Mallett, from Here You Are, 2013©

The Power of Love

Christ is healing you through the power of His love. In truth, our healing is needed, in part, because we have also failed to love. And so the fullness of healing will come as you and I begin to follow Christ’s Word:

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. (John 15:10-14)

There is no fullness of joy until we begin to love the way Jesus has loved us. There really is no complete healing in our lives (of the effects of Original Sin) until we love as He showed us. There is no friendship with God if we reject His commandments.

Each springtime, the Earth is “healed” because it “abides” in its orbit without deviation. So too, man and woman were created to live totally and completely in the orbit of love. When we depart from that, things go out of harmony and a certain chaos takes place in and around us. And so, just by loving we begin to heal ourselves and the world around us.

…keep in mind the words of the Lord Jesus who himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ (Acts 20:35)

It is more blessed because the one who loves is entering more deeply into communion with God.

Healing Relationships

Recall again the axiom:

You can’t go back and change the beginning,
but you can start where you are and change the ending.

The biblical way of saying this is:

Above all, let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)

In Day 6, we talked about how our lack of forgiveness for others can often be expressed with a “cold shoulder.” By choosing to forgive, we break those patterns and gut reactions that, ultimately, bring more division. But we need to go further. We need to love others as Christ has loved us.

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good. (Rom 12:20-21)

Love conquers evil. If St. Paul says, “the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds,”^[1]2 Cor 10:4 then love is chief among our weapons. It breaks down old patterns, thoughts, and walls rooted in self-defense, self-preservation, if not selfishness. The reason is that love is not just an action or a feeling; it is a Person.

…for God is love. (1 John 4:8)

Love is so powerful that no matter who exercises it, even an atheist, it can change hearts. We were made to love and be loved. How healing is love, even from a stranger!

But what exactly should authentic love look like in our interactions?

Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also everyone for those of others. Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave… (Phil 3:2-7)

When it comes to your relationships, especially those most wounded, it is this kind of love — sacrificial love — that is most transformative. It is this emptying of self that “covers a multitude of sins.” This is how we change the ending of our wounded story: love, as Christ has loved us.

In your journal, ask the Lord to show you how He wants you to love those around you — your family, friends, co-workers, schoolmates, etc. — but especially how to love those with whom you are not in harmony, who are hard to love, or who don’t reciprocate love. Write down what you are going to do, what you are going to change, what you will do differently.

And then pray with the song below, asking the Lord to help you and fill you with His love. Yes, Love, live in me.

Love Live in Me

If I speak in angelic tongues, have the gift of prophecy
Comprehend all mysteries… but have not love
I have nothing

If I have faith to move mountains, give away everything I own
Even my body to be burned… but have not love,
I am nothing

So, Love live in me, I am weak, O, but Love, You are strong
So, Love live in me, no longer I
Self must die
And Love live in me

If I call to Him night and day, sacrifice, O, and fast and pray
“Here I am, Lord, here is my praise”, but have not love
I have nothing

If I’m admired from sea to sea, leave a name and a legacy
Live my days ’till a thousand and three, but have not love
I am nothing

So, Love live in me, I am weak, O, but Love, You are strong
So, Love live in me, no longer I
Self must die

And love bears all things,
And love hopes all things
And love endures
And love never fails

So, Love live in me, I am weak, O so weak,
O but Love, You are strong
So, Love live in me, no longer I
Self must die
And Love live in me
Love live in me, O Love live in me