How do we become as loving as we want to be? I recognize in myself a lack of love: people whom I want to avoid, people whom I'd just as soon never relate to. Recently I went to the park for a homeschooling event, and when I saw who was there, I wanted to turn away. And I had just been doing prayers regarding the love of God! Oh, how my conscience burned! So I pushed ahead, and gave love that I did not have.
This is what I have just seen that is God's answer as to how to become as loving as we know we ought to be: ". . . because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us," (Romans 5:2).
We are not loving enough, on our own. Some of us are more inclined than others, naturally, but none of us meets the standard, even the standard that we impose on ourselves.
To me, the only way to fulfill our natural propensity to love is to become supernaturally loving (the great irony, constantly pointed out by St. Thomas Aquinas): to be filled with the Holy Spirit, who IS Love. The Holy Spirit, as Paul says, is "given to us": we do not just happen upon having His Spirit in us. It comes through sacraments and through the people in the Body of Christ laying hands upon us and giving it, as in the Early Church.
When we are "filled with this Spirit," (Eph. 5:18), then love can be "poured out into our hearts." Pour it! Lord, pour it into my heart! I need more!
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