"Pure love ... knows that only one thing is needed to please God: to do even the smallest things out of great love - love, and always love." - Divine Mercy in My Soul, St. FaustinaI really, really, really like the video game series "Kingdom Hearts".
Don't worry, this isn't going to be a rant of the greatness and majesty of the game series (especially because all greatness and majesty belongs to God). However, there is something amazing about this series that is in every one of its games, or at least the ones I've played (and it'll probably be in the one coming out this year!); the concept of love.
From a video game, you wouldn't normally expect the Christian concept of love. It'd more likely be the view of the world, that love is some mysterious force we can't understand shouldn't try to, or, even worse, that love is simply a feeling that happens to people. However, Kingdom Hearts doesn't do this!
In the first game (spoilers ahead, but this is the internet, so whatever), Sora, the main character, is presented with a choice; either lose the person he's been trying to rescue the whole game (one of his two best friends, a girl named Kairi), or become a Heartless, people without hearts transformed into creatures of darkness. In the end, even with Kairi's pleading for him to save himself, Sora decides to become a Heartless to save her. Then, in Kingdom Hearts 2, he and Riku, his other best friend, save the world from the Nobodies but get trapped inside the "Realm of Darkness". Recently, I've been thinking about how much this sounds like 2 Corinthians 5:21, "God made Him Who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." Christ took on all of our sin so we wouldn't have to die from it anymore.
Now, I know you might be thinking that this all sounds rather silly. "A video game teaching us about the love of God, the love of Christ? Ridiculous!" However, this game series, especially the two noted above, show us something very, very important, something that all of us tend to forget really often; love is, first and foremost, the sacrificing of yourself, in whatever ways you do so, by your time and talents, by your giving up of distractions and pride, for the joy, the happiness, the GOOD of the beloved. The Father sent us His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, for this purpose, for us to be saved from sin and death and to be united to He Who is Goodness Itself again! "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that those who believe in Him might not perish but have eternal life."(John 3:16) At the foot of the Cross, and at the stone rolled away, we see the sacrificial redemption for our good, that God loves us more than we can ever imagine.
There's a song in the Kingdom Hearts series called, "Dearly Beloved" that plays at the start menu of each major game, and I think the placement of that is important. You mostly play as Sora in the games (with a few exceptions, but the characters are always similar), and the focus of the game is always on his quest to save the world, and that quest starts with a song called, "Dearly Beloved"; Christ saved the world, and He did it for His dearly beloved: Us!
Dearly beloved of Christ our Lord, we're all supposed to love like God does; sacrificially for the good of each other. May we all live solely for that, as heroes and heroines in this story of salvation by our God!
Please pray for each other, everyone, and please pray for me as well!
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