La Bella Vita

“Yes, I think you are right… we cannot love perfectly until we experience the perfect love of God.”

We met Rino several months ago at "La Sapienza", the largest university in Europe, during our English conversation time. He also came to our Thanksgiving dinner, but since then we haven't really seen much of him. So it was quite a nice surprise to see Rino show up at our weekly meeting. It was his first time there, but he was really diving in.

The topic of the evening was - love. We started off looking at a rather bizarre paining by Mauricio Bouzas Gasque called Love Song. We then went around the room discussing what this painting communicated about love.

We followed up the discussion by watching a clip from the movie “Les Misérables”. It was the scene at the beginning of the movie when Jean Valjean, fresh from prison, is generously welcomed into the home of a trusting, loving priest. In the middle of the night the priest awakes to find Valjean stealing his silverware. Emerging from the shadows, Valjean strikes the old man and flees. The next morning, Valjean is captured and brought to the priest’s home by the police. However, instead of giving him what he deserves, the priest rescues him by claiming that the silverware was a gift, then going even farther to give him two silver candlesticks as well. This redemptive act of unconditional love is a mirror of God’s love to us in Christ, and it forever changes the course of Valjean’s life.



We closed off the meeting by discussing in small groups the meaning of 1 John 4:18-19.

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us."

Overall it was a very fun evening and a great conversation. Rino grasped, maybe for the first time, that God’s unconditional love is something that we can’t get, give, or experience on our own. Please pray that he would truly experience and be transformed by the unconditional love of Christ.