THE Lenten sacrifice brings about the ability to love and increase our openness to others. Those who have an abundance of food, money, land, clothes, water and education should love their neighbour, particularly the poor, more than ever before. But also, the poor must love and give to each other.

All of us can love more than we presently do. Loving is the greatest of gifts that can be given to any individual, and being loved is one of the greatest of gifts that we can receive. It is God’s truth that loving and being loved is the most pleasing of human experiences.

We want to pour out ourselves to the most needy of people, and we want to be loved by those who have very little. Jesus asks us: What sense does it make if we love our own brothers and sisters and receive our own relatives into our own house? We must love the stranger, love the poor, love the forgotten ones, then we will be enriched and filled with more blessings than ever before.

Strange how the Lord reverses the order of values in the world. The world tells us love yourself first, then secondly love your family members, love your friends, love your co-workers; love those who can provide for us money, land, a good material life, pleasure. The poor, the needy, the forgotten, the rejected, the foreigners, the enemies, are the last of all to whom we will offer our love — we offer our time, talent and goods.

Jesus is the reversal of all the worldly values taught to us by those who are wise in the ways of the world. Jesus teaches us the values of the Heavenly Father and the heavenly kingdom. The ways of the Heavenly Father and His beloved Son teach us an opposite, paradoxical, contradictory way than what the material and secular world teaches us.

The spiritual kingdom of God, however, is forever and more important. Whereas the ways of the world are temporary, they are as different as the soul and the body are different. Our soul longs for God and His eternal home, whereas the body seeks the temporary pleasures of our sensory appetites. As humans we are first and foremost children of God, and brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ blessed by the Holy Spirit.

The bodily needs are important, but not the priority of human beings who are made according to the image and likeness of God. This is why we cannot be satisfied with the material goods and creatures of this world. We try, and we try, and do our best to obtain what is considered to be the most pleasurable, beautiful, outstanding and rare in our world. But there is always something or someone greater or better than we have or are.

Lent provides us with the one true principle that is the most lasting and satisfying principle of life — that we should love the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind and strength, and we should love our neighbour, especially the poorest of the poor, as the good Samaritan does, giving until it hurts. When that is done we will all have peace, including with those close to us, our biological family, relatives and friends. And, God will love us and fill our heart with love, satisfaction, and peace.

What else could we ever want in life?

The Very Reverend Father Richard Ho Lung is founder of Missionaries of the Poor.

Fr Richard Ho Lung