Love is giving and not taking
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By: Father Shay Cullen
We might think of Christmas as the end of the year celebration but it is really the beginning of something new.
The New Year is a chance to start life anew .We can make New Year resolutions and promise to reform our habits and lives. It’s a challenging time to find a commitment worth living for a love that will last finding a fulfilling future. Christ showed us the steps to happiness, the spirit of giving, changing an unjust world, loving without seeking reward, finding joy in self-sacrifice, helping those who can’t help us and giving our lives for others. What greater love is there he asked?
All over the world there are wonderful people giving their lives in service even to the point of death for their belief in the dignity of the poor and there rights. This is the living example of the unselfish love that Jesus taught us. Sister Dorothy Stang, a 74 year-old American nun, is just one extraordinary example. She gave her life to serving the poor of the Amazonian region, in Para, Northern Brazil. She was shot dead by two gunmen last February because she was so effective in inspiring poor farmers to take a stand for their rights to the land they cultivated. The two killers admitted the crime and said a rich land grabber paid them to kill the nun. The criminal masterminds behind all such crimes against priests, nuns and lay Christians are rarely brought to justice.
They teach the world what Christian love is all about. Only a few years ago a young girl that was trafficked and forced in to prostitution was rescued through a recovery Programme. She found a new life filled with meaning and service to others. Today she is a college graduate and a social worker helping other children that have been abused and exploited.
She is a outspoken advocate of children’s rights and describes how she had a spiritual awaking and a change of mind and heart leaving behind ‘romantic’ gratifying love. It was a relationship where she was used and exploited. She set out to find selfless love. Her story inspired me to write a song sung by the children of the Preda Children Center, in the Philippines.
“Love is giving not taking”
You tell me that you love me and
call me to your side,
You want to hold and touch me
Yet never as your bride,
There must be more to love that satisfying a need
From all that kind of selfish love
I am longing to be freed.
Love is giving and not taking
It’s sharing night and day
It’s helping others heart and soul
And asking no repay …
Love is giving and not taking
It’s sharing heart and soul
It’s dying for another
Is there any higher goal?
No more for me romantic love
I have to pass it by
Loving all humanity is what I want to try.
The street kids and the beaten,
The victims of abuse
I will love them all instead of you
So my life will be of use.
Chorus; Love is giving and not
taking
It’s sharing night and day
It’s helping others heart and soul
And asking no repay.
So now my friend I say good bye
Another age is here
Calling us to change our ways and put an end to fear
So join me on my journey
Leave behind your troubled days
Perhaps together we can learn to love
In many other ways.
Chorus; Love is giving and not
taking
It’s sharing night and day
It’s helping others heart and soul
And asking no repay.
So here I am with the hungry and
the poor
In the jungles of the Congo and the desert of Darfur
In the city slums, the prisons and
the camps
With the starving children and their parents filled with grief
I’m meeting Love personified in those who bring relief.
Chorus; Love is giving and not
taking
It’s sharing night and day
It’s helping others heart and soul
And asking no repay. [End]
