06.01.25 Kasih Tanpa Batas: Kisah Pengampunan Tuhan di Tengah Penyesalan Terdalam

Monday after Epiphany "Mt 4:12-17, 23-25" Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." And he went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. This is a synopsis of the public life of Our Lord. “He went about all Galilee”. He went. He didn’t wait for them to come. And He did it in a rather ‘radical’ way: He went about all Galilee teaching and healing every disease and every infirmity; His fame spread throughout all Syria; they brought Him all the sick… Nothing low-key, no half-measures… We could say that He took it seriously. Christmas has reminded us that Jesus came to the world to fulfil that mission. His love for everyone was total. He wanted to reach all who had lost everything through sin, so as to give them back everything. Jesus can’t act in a half-hearted way because He has given us His entire Heart. He loves each one of us so much! Love is proved in trial. One of the most beautiful love stories is the one of Jacob and Rachel. From the moment Jacob saw her, he fell in love and soon after he asked Laban, Rachel’s father, to marry her. Jacob loved her so much that he offered to work for Laban for 7 years in order to marry Rachel. “So Jacob served seven years for Rachel,” we read in the book of Genesis, “and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her” (Gen 29:20). But that wasn’t the end of the story. After those 7 years Laban told Jacob that, in order to marry Rachel, he had to work 7 more years; and Jacob agreed! So, all in all, Jacob worked 14 years to marry the woman he loved. That is real love. The love of God for souls is as serious as that. He never gives up on us, searching for us and bringing us to Him, to our happiness. One day, when Bl Angela of Foligno was meditating on the Passion of Jesus, she heard His voice saying: 'I did not love you as a joke.' No. There is no love more serious than the Love of God for us. If only I could grasp how much God loves me! Mary, my Mother, help me to feel God's love for me.