What I Learned Today from St. Matthew - learning to love as Christ loves

You must extend welcoming arms to your own dear children, because anyone who extends a welcome to a little child is welcoming Christ Himself.

(I can begin to learn how to do this with my own child, but I must extend my love to a world full of children who are not born of my flesh . . . for even the pagans love their own children.)

You must love your family and friends, perhaps even to the point of dying for them, because anyone who extends selfless love to one of these has extended love to Christ.

(I can begin to learn this kind of selfless love in my own home and within my own family, but I must extend this love to my enemies as well. . . for even the pagans know how to love those who love them back.)

You must put your needs behind those of your children: feeding them, visiting them, nursing them, helping them to untangle themselves from their self-made prisons.

(I can begin to learn how to feed, nurse, visit, and clothe my children, putting aside my own desires and putting my family's needs ahead of my own, but I must learn to do this for a world of strangers . . . for even the pagans know how to care for their own children.)

Matthew 5:44-48

But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.