Love: The Alpha and Omega of Existence

When one journeys in the missions, one learns to see Love not as an abstract concept, but as life, as sacrifice, as a fire that illuminates and warms souls. Love is the hand that lifts up the fallen, the bread that is shared, the gaze that comforts, the tear that becomes prayer.

In the heart of Africa, where the land is dry and hearts thirst for hope, I have seen Love break through the hardness of human indifference. Children who walk for hours to reach school, not because someone forces them to, but because there they find light, knowledge, and a future. Mothers who, although they have nothing, will give their only piece of bread to a child who is hungrier than their own.

In a village near Toliara, when we opened a new well, an elderly man knelt before the faucet and, weeping, took water in his hands as if holding something sacred. “Now we will not die of thirst,” he said. For us it was just another project. For them it was life. It was Love.

In prisons, where people are forgotten, Love comes and reminds us that every soul is precious. A prisoner once told me: “I do not fear punishment, I fear oblivion.” And when we gave him a little food, he felt that his life had value. This is Love: to tell a person whom everyone has forgotten, “you are my brother.”

In our clinic, a mother brought her child in her arms, almost lifeless from malnutrition. The doctors fought, prayer was raised, and the child was saved. When the mother held him again in her embrace, she told me: “God came to my home today.” Love saves. Literally.

Love is all-powerful, and yet it permits pain, scourging, nails, Crucifixion. Why? Because only through sacrifice is it fully revealed. It keeps nothing for itself, it does not count the cost. It gives itself completely. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).

Love, therefore, is not a beautiful word, it is not a feeling. It is Christ Himself walking among us. It is Christ standing beside the poor, the sick, the prisoner, the hungry child, the weeping mother. It is Christ who calls us to become bearers of this Love, to step outside ourselves and meet the other.

Let us allow Him to guide us, to teach us, to shape us in His image and likeness. Let us also become light, love, comfort for those around us. And then, Love will be revealed in all its glory, bridging earth with heaven.

† Prodromos of Toliara