Sometimes loving leads to suffering, due to disappointed expectations or a lack of gratitude. So we ask ourselves: is it really worth suffering for love?
To answer this question I thought of a passage from the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus answers a specific question: “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29).
And it does so by completely reversing the perspective through a parable: the famous parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10.30-37).
After a man is attacked by bandits, beaten and left half-dead on the road, those passing by see him. The important and religious figures of the time, starting from the Levite and the priest, see it and move on.
Instead the Samaritan stops and has compassion for him.
He takes care of him: he lifts him, bandages him, pours oil and wine on the wounds, puts him on his horse, pays concretely so that this man can live again.
And Jesus closes this provocative parable by saying: “Go and do the same” (Lk 10:37).
Don’t ask yourself “who is my neighbor”, but become the neighbor of those who need your love.
What did the good Samaritan gain? Nothing.
He spent his wine, his oil, his time—he wasted it on a stranger—and he paid out of his own pocket.
Here is a great truth that Jesus gives us in this Gospel.
Love means being vulnerable.
The vulnerability of love is a crossroads, an either/or: we must decide whether to love or not love.
And, fundamentally, it means exposing yourself to suffering.
Perhaps then we should turn the question around: rather than asking ourselves “is it worth suffering for love?”, we should ask ourselves: “is it worth living without love?”
As Chiara Amirante often reminds us, “everything passes, only love remains”.
No one will remember us for how many titles we have won, how many degrees or master’s degrees we have obtained, how much money we have accumulated or the medals we have obtained in our lives.
People will remember if we loved them, if we were meaningful to them, if we were there when they needed help, if we were able to overcome difficulties, if we had the courage of the vulnerability of love.
Maybe without love you can even survive, but you live dead in the heart.
Therefore, rather than asking ourselves whether it is worth suffering for love, we should remember that a life without love there is really no life.
