No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. // John 4:12 (from the Gospel for the Memorial of Saint Augustine)
My grandma sat across from me at her kitchen table, eating her toast and sipping her black coffee, both placed on a colorful crocheted placemat. She didn’t say much unless she needed a coffee refill or became curious about who I was. She had developed Alzheimer's disease many years prior to that year where I found myself living in her town for a summer job.
She was a large, stubborn, and witty Mexican mother to thirteen children, and several of them still lived nearby. I spent a lot of time with her in those couple of months, and got a front row seat to the tender love poured out to her by her sons and daughters.
My aunts would take turns coming over after their nine-to-five jobs to make her dinner, bathe her, get her dressed, administer medications, comb her hair, paint her nails, and love her with the utmost devotion.
This was their daily life for nearly a decade, and very few people ever witnessed it.
I remember thinking in those days, This is what true love looks like.
The kind of love that is quiet, faithful, mostly unseen by anyone else, and utterly selfless. This is perfect love. This is God’s love made manifest in our world.
We know it when we see it, don’t we?
The sleepless mother spoon feeding her disabled son. The engaged man fasting for his future wife. The woman who drops off a meal for her grieving friend. The husband who learns how to help his wife through a mental health crisis.
I think it’s easy to think we are failures in loving others, but God has given us an incredible capacity for it. As John reminds us in today’s Gospel for the Memorial of Saint Augustine (see John 4:7-16), this is the manner in which God calls us to be His very Heart here on earth.
Do we know how powerful this is? The power to make God visible in this world, through perfect love?
Today, reflect on your greatest experiences of God’s love in your life. How can we keep pouring out this love, so freely given to us?
Jana Zuniga Pingel is an artist and designer based in Colorado Springs, where she resides with her husband. She earned her B.A. in Studio Art from Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana. She is the founder and owner of January Jane Shop, an online boutique for Catholic art and goods. When she isn’t busy doing entrepreneurial things, she’s cooking a new recipe, hiking a mountain, or party planning.
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