“If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.” (1 Corinthians 13:3, The Message)
Love is a central tenet of the Christian faith. I think sometimes it is easy to forget this. People tick us of; they take advantage of us; they are different from us; they are unlovely and needy (which when one thinks about it is a pretty good description of us in God's eyes); so it's easy to find excuses not to love them.
Of course what we find in Christ is exactly the opposite (which is why the Church might find it so hard to welcome him now, he just wouldn't act like we think he ought to). Christ seems to have gone out of his way to love the unlovely; the Zaccheus's, the Mary Magdalene's, the Samaritan woman.
It's often a struggle to be like Christ. When it comes to love, as Mother Teresa once said, we need to look at people as if they were Jesus. Love will flow naturally from that.
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