Joel 2:25-27: Love Born of Freedom
Friday, August 22, 2025
A repost from July 31, 2011.
In today’s Gospel from Mark 6:53-56 we hear the message that we recognize Jesus’ goodness immediately when we are suffering or in need. [P]eople immediately recognized him. They scurried about the surrounding country and began to bring in the sick on mats to wherever he was. Jesus, moved by compassion, acts out of his love for humanity; he turns no one away. We must remember to invite Jesus to heal our wounds each day. We must ask God to guide us as we try to solve our small and big problems. And we must turn over our fears and anxieties to the Holy Spirit constantly.
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, a Cistercian monk, writes in today’s MAGNIFICAT Meditation (108-109): We have to invite Jesus continually to become Lord of our life. He never imposes himself by force because, being Love, he wants to be loved in return, and love is born only from freedom and never from force or obligation. What is true of the natural level is also true of the supernatural. God cannot force us to love him. Yet instead of loving God unconditionally, we spend most of our time piously trying to manipulate his power to suit our own desires: we want to have God at our beck and call . . . we have to place ourselves, voluntarily and gratefully, in the hands of the Physician of the bodies and souls, confidently manifesting to him our every illness and complaint.
In this portion of Joel’s prophecy we are reminded just how much God wants to care for us that even after we have turned away and have done things that would erase any human relationship, God is still waiting patiently to heal.
From the MAGNIFICAT Morning Prayer Mini-Reflection (102): God in his power is refuge and strength; God in his mercy is the river that refreshes the soul; God in his beauty stills all our useless struggles and gather us into his peace.
The Lord himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still. (Exodus 14:14)
We already have all that we need . . . we may not feel it.
We already have all that we want . . . we may be blind to it.
We already have all the love we require . . . God is allowing us to come to this understanding.
God never imposes God’s self by force because, being Love, God wants to be loved in return, and love is born only from freedom and never from force or obligation.
Let us live our lives in total trust of the saving power of God’s love for us.
Let us free ourselves of all doubt, all coercion, and all lusting after control for all of these are alien to God’s love.
Let us instead allow ourselves to be born of God’s endless compassion and love.
Cameron, Peter John, Rev., ed. “Mini-Reflection.” MAGNIFICAT. 21 July 2011. Print.
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