Love Archives - Amazing Catechists

Following Christ : Relentless Love

I have met many people who gave up trying to follow Our Lord simply because they felt that the effort was a hopeless cause. Mired and paralyzed in their imperfection and inconsistency, these folks grew tired of falling far short of Christ Himself. While I pray for them and often try to warmly invite them out of their funk, I realize that their folly is more common than one would like to admit.

Got That 80/20 Rule Wrong

I once read that salvation is 80% focusing on God and others and 20% focusing on oneself. Certainly, we all need to undergo faith and practice self-reflection to make sure we are constantly improving ourselves in the eyes of God. Just as surely, we all most spend most of our time focusing and serving God and others by putting our faith into action.

The problem with those who give up trying to follow Christ is that they have somehow flipped that 80/20 rule around. Whether they realize it or not, they are spending most of their time worrying about themselves and too little time loving and serving God and others. The greatest saints in history did not worry about themselves because they were too busy loving and caring for others and serving God. Thus, the first step to following Christ is to focus on Christ and others and worrying less about yourself.

Relentless Love over Relentless Perfection

People always hear how perfect Christ was–and with good reason. However, that perfection was born out of the fact that He is all God and all human, while we are not. Trying to be perfect as Christ is perfect is an exercise in frustration and failure. Trapped in a society and world which defines failure as failing to reach some stated, pinpoint target is a prescription for unhappiness.

When we look at Christ, do we see His perfection as a case of relentless love over relentless “perfection”? Our Lord is perfect because He loves perfectly. We are not perfect because as fallible and weak humans we can only love imperfectly. The key, however, is that our standard or target should not be perfect love but, rather, relentless love. Christ was able to love perfectly and relentlessly. As mere humans, we are called to stick to the relentless part and do our best with the perfect part.

Simply put, imperfect love relentlessly and sincerely pursued and practiced will get us to heaven a lot faster than so-called perfect love insincerely and occasionally practiced. Often, it is not how well we love but how much we try our best to love better that counts. God knows that we are not perfect, but He wants us to love so much that our imperfection does not matter.

Conclusion

If being a Christian means following Christ, then being a Christian entails falling as Christ did yet relentlessly getting up again to keep trying as Christ did. While Our Lord never made a mistake, He did fall under the weight of His cross a few times. We make plenty of mistakes and we fall under the weight of our crosses, real or created, all the time. The key distinction and goal to be sought here is that we must love God and others so relentlessly that getting up and trying over and over to love and serve others, regardless of our falls, is the difference that matters.

2017 Gabriel Garnica

Marriage Memes: Married Sexuality

By Karee Santos

This next installment of free downloadable graphics focuses on the intimate subject of married sexuality and fertility. Nothing can bring a married couple closer together or drive them further apart.

Quotes are from Chapter 7 of The Four Keys to Everlasting Love: How Your Catholic Marriage Can Bring You Joy for a Lifetime. Feel free to use them in your ministry. And please join the online discussion on Facebook.

Meme #1: Catechism

Meme #2: Scripture

Meme #3: Quote from Four Keys

Meme #4: Pope Quote

Meme #5: Action Plan

“Be with Me”

By Maureen Smith

When I was looking over the readings for Lent the phrase that grabbed me by the heart was from the Responsorial Psalm for this Sunday, “Be with me, Lord, when I am in trouble.” This phrase is one I hope to carry throughout Lent.

In the First Reading for today from the Book of Joel, we see that a fast is proclaimed. However, in the announced time of penance it is not “every man for himself.” Joel clearly instructs the congregation to come together to proclaim a fast and petition God for mercy for the whole community.

This Lent, we might take the opportunity to intentionally come together as a family, as a classroom, as a prayer group, etc. to acknowledge this Lenten Season and pray together for God’s Mercy. Together, we can talk about how we can all work to turn towards God and away from sin.

Typically, conversations around Lent tend to formulated around the question, “What are you giving up?” But my experience has been that this leads to competition and quickly takes the focus off of Christ.

Because Lent can very easily become about us and what we are doing, it might be helpful to structure our Lenten journey around those opportunities when we meet as a family, prayer group, or parish. The very act of coming together connects us with the One in whose Name we are gathered and makes us aware of the Presence of God in our midst. It is in this context that we often hear God’s voice calling us to conversion and transformation.

Gathering as a community enables us to remember our dependence upon each other and upon God as we recognize our own needs and those of others. We can so easily desensitize ourselves to our longing for God. We operate on autopilot, forgetting to call upon the Lord for help. We forget that he is always upholding our existence, always ready to come to our aid. But the Liturgy this week reminds us of our desire for God to be with us, and of the reality of His continuous presence among us each day.
With our brothers and sisters in the Lord, let us invite Him into our joys and sorrows. Let us recognize the needs of others and petition the Lord for His mercy. We do this each week at Mass during the Intercessions, but is there space for this kind of prayer at home at the dinner table or before bed? Do we pray with our neighbors, co-workers, friends, and those God puts in our lives? These experiences can be very humbling and nerve-wracking, but never once have I regretted praying with others, especially with the sick and the dying. It is less about saying the right thing and more about “being with” the person as God has promised to be with us.

By strengthening ourselves in prayer, we can make this Season of Lent a time of evangelization. Because we recognize our own need of Communion with God and others, we can see the longing in the hearts of others who may have less opportunity for connection. It is not up to us to save or fix others, but God does ask us to be His witnesses, His disciples, His conduits of grace. By being with someone, by recognizing the goodness in his or her soul, we reflect back to that person God’s presence in his or her soul.

When we pray with others we exercise our baptismal roles as priest, prophet and king. We are able to call upon the name of the Lord and invoke His intercession as we have the Spirit within us who knows how to pray, even when
we do not. We are able to testify as prophets to God’s promise of salvation and His love for all people. We who are children of God and co-heirs with Christ in God are able to ask “anything” of Him. Do we have the courage to do this? Do we ask God for the eyes to see and the ears to hear those around us who need someone to accompany them?

This Lent, I encourage you to ask yourself how the Lord might be calling you to community. Where is He asking you to be with others and where is he calling you to serve? How can you help bring God’s love and mercy into that community? How can you bring that love and mercy into your own heart in order to transform it into a version much like Christ’s own Sacred Heart?

Letting Go of Our Nets: A Journey with Peter

By Maureen Smith

The Call

Yesterday morning I took the walk of shame down the side aisle of the Chapel, 5 minutes late and we were already at the Gospel. Frustrated and feeling confirmation that I was definitely a failure at absolutely everything if I couldn’t even make it to Mass on time, I then listened to the Gospel and underneath my gritted teeth felt a sense of relief and the first sign of a smile since yesterday. Having experienced a personal failure a week ago (joining the ranks of the unemployed), I felt comforted by the life and example of Peter.

In the Call of Peter in Mark’s Gospel, which we read yesterday, Jesus clarifies Peter’s vocation and asks him to leave behind what he thought defined him for a life of intimacy and trust in the Lord rather than in the success of the work of his hands.

Similarly, in Luke’s account of the Call of Peter, Jesus uses a moment of failure (on the part of Peter to provide fish after working all night) to reveal His identity as the Son of God while also challenging Peter to discover his own identity, not as a fisherman but as Jesus calls him in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, a “fisher of men.” John’s Gospel recounts a somewhat different, but not inconsistent, first encounter. Here Jesus also reveals to Peter (then Simon) his identity by renaming him Cephas (Peter).

Let It Go!

As we see in our scriptural pilgrimage, it takes Peter a while to really let go of what he thinks constitutes his identity, as well as his ideas of the Messiah and how His glory should be manifested. We see this when he fails to walk on water, when he rebukes Jesus for predicting his crucifixion, and when he denies Jesus three times.

He may have left behind his fisherman’s nets but there are still many figurative nets holding him back from receiving the truth of his identity as well as what it means to be an Apostle, probably because he is unable to believe the totality of Jesus’s identity which He holds unfolds (albeit sometimes cryptically) to Peter and the others.

Nets

So often we, too, link our accomplishments and the outcomes of our efforts to our identity so that, if and when they fail to measure up to our standards or those of others, we judge ourselves to be inadequate and are quickly overtaken by tidal waves of unworthiness. We assess ourselves by how productive work was, the number on the scale, the number of miles we ran, positive feedback, approval of others, or any other combination of worldly measures of success. It is not wrong that we have aspirations, but it is not true that these standards have any bearing on our identity and worthiness of God’s love and mercy. What are the “nets” we cling to for a sense of acceptance and worthiness that, although they may be part of our calling, are not essential to our identity? Do we need to put them down as Jesus instructs Peter in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew? Or do we need to trust in Jesus’s intercession and instruction as we see in Luke?

Do we struggle to put down these nets because we have a hard time believing in Jesus as truly God, as truly more powerful than our little mistakes or failures to “make something of ourselves?” Yes we can know the truth intellectually, but do we really believe in Jesus, in His power and authority over sin and death, and in the truth that our identity comes from Him rather than our accomplishments or lackthereof?

When Our Nothingness Encounters God’s Mercy

When we experience failure before the Lord we can become afraid and the shame we feel can be a barrier to further intimacy with him. But these encounters with our weaknesses are often the point of entry for the Lord, just as they were teaching moments and opportunities for Peter.

I think often of how ashamed Peter must have felt in Luke’s account of the Call of Peter. He would have felt a similar sense of failure throughout his journey with Jesus, however, Jesus uses these opportunities to fill the emptiness in Peter’s heart with His light and truth, which Peter will more fully embrace at Pentecost.

Saint Therese’s thoughts on this passage, recorded in Divine Intimacy by Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalene, give us a refreshing outlook on what Jesus can do with our failures. She writes, “Had the Apostle caught some small fish, perhaps our divine Master would not have, worked a miracle; but he had caught nothing, and so through the power and goodness of God his nets were soon filled with great fishes. Such is Our Lord’s way. He gives as God, with divine generosity, but He insists on humility of heart.”

In her italics, Therese shows us the keys (no pun intended) to how Peter learned to follow the Lord. We will often find ourselves in the “nothing” stage. This is where the Lord’s grace is most efficacious. However, she warns that He “insists on humility of heart.” This means that we must, like Peter, let go of our fear of failure and put our whole trust in the Jesus and let him be Who He says He is, God!

Now imagine how Jesus looked at Peter in his moments of failure, for example, after a full night of reeling in net after net of nothing. Or when Jesus, after His Resurrection asks Peter if he loves Him. His gaze must have been quite the opposite of Peter’s inward gaze of self-judgment, which actually distorts his perception of how Jesus sees him.

As was the case with Peter, Jesus looks upon our failures with mercy, not with shame, impatience, disgust, etc. He may not immediately reveal His glory in our failures, that usually takes time. We may not reel in a miraculous abundance of tangible goods. Most of our failures will probably require at least a bit of waiting and trusting that eventually Jesus will use this emptiness or failure for His glory and His plan for our welfare…not woe.

Spoiler Alert! (We Will Live Happily Ever After)

Peter, whose blunders are so frequent in the Gospels, shows us that we too can achieve greatness. His ministry most likely did not feel or look successful. It looked much like that of Christ whose life and ministry was looked upon as a failure up until the Resurrection. So also our lives may appear to be lacking in value, but if we remain under the gaze of Jesus and strive to live in the truth of our identity as Children of God, we will achieve the greatest success, sainthood.

Someday, in Heaven, we will hopefully be able chat with Peter, praise God, and laugh about our failures which were transformed into our greatest moments of sanctity. We might feel like we are currently getting a poor return for our efforts, but trust in the example of Peter, it’s worth the struggle!

To those who feel alone…

By Maureen Smith

Every first Friday at my office there is a holy hour at the end of the day. I rarely get the opportunity to go to adoration, so this is a time of great grace for me when I am able to attend.

When I entered the chapel last Friday I saw something that made me feel sorrow for the Heart of Jesus. I was one of three people who came to adore him that afternoon. I didn’t feel any sort of judgment for those who could not make this prayer time, but the Lord revealed to me the loneliness of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

How many times have I rushed past the Chapel thinking of the next thing, or how many excuses have I made for not spending just a moment in prayer?

How many times have I felt the great pain of loneliness and have forgotten what the Lord felt in his Agony, his Passion and his Death?

“In order to be like You, who are always alone in the Blessed Sacrament, I shall love solitude and try to converse with You as much as possible.”

These are the words of Saint Margaret Mary Alocoque who understood well the sorrowful Heart of Jesus that knows abandonment and rejection.

But what are we to offer to the Lord? I feel I am unable to do anything without adding to the sorrows of Jesus, seeing my sinfulness and many weaknesses. But discouragement and any thoughts contrary to those that draw us to the Feet of Jesus are not of God. Hiding in shame and self-punishment are never what God asks, but rather repentence and returning to the Lord, even (and especially) if we come with our own sorrows and hurts.

This is what we are to offer Him, our own hearts that he desires to place within his heart–in order to heal and redeem the parts that we thought hopeless or unworthy of Him.

This kind of prayer, this being alone with the one who is alone is incredibly freeing, even if it is painful. It means acknowledging our lowliness, our inability to be “great” in any worldly sense, and admitting that all of our efforts in this life would be meaningless…except that He dwells in them and makes this life worth living through the redemption He offers.

We can only have hope in this life with him because without Him there would be no point to everything we do. Our faith tells us that not only is there hope and meaning to life, but even joy in suffering and death. In them we are reborn into Eternal Life with our God, the life in which we are invited to participate at Baptism, a reality which comes most alive in the union we call prayer.

When you feel alone, let it become an opportunity to open the door to the Heart of Christ rather than to dispair or discouragement. He is always alone with you.

“Even if a mother should forget her child, I will never forget you…”

By Maureen Smith

This past week I had the opportunity to serve a young woman in a crisis pregnancy. Although in the end she chose to go through with the abortion, and although it was a heartbreaking experience for the many people involved in ministry and prayer, I am grateful that I was able to be a small part of this ministry.

I thought I would share a few of my thoughts and reflections.

First of all, I was blown away by the generous response of all of those I reached out to for resources for this woman.

So much love for one mother and her child.

In a few days, because of the friends, using mostly text messages, this woman had multiple job opportunities, places to live, families to adopt the baby, and other practical needs. There were those I had lost touch with for a few years, but all awkwardness and reservation was consumed by the love for this woman who they will probably never meet.

I was tempted part way through the week to be prideful in my “networking skills.” But coming before the Lord I saw this sin for what it was and the reality of what I was doing. This was not about me, it was not about me proving I could be successful at this particular project. This was about being an instrument, if God saw it fit to use me. Plus, it was really through those who responded to my message that the real miracles were taking place.

I was inspired by the love poured out for these two souls, and it brought tears to my eyes seeing so many people put their lives on hold for the possibility of assisting someone who might not choose to receive their help.

So many prayers were offered, and I was struck by the amount of generosity and love that was given for this pregnant woman.

And when the news came about the final decision, we all grieved. But the ministry kept going, and it seemed the prayers and love only increased.

In the hours and moments of waiting to see what she would decide, knowing I would have to tell the almost 100 prayer warriors the update, I looked at the Lord, asking him how he could let us do this to him!

Every day he watches us, sends us guardian angels to guide us carefully along the right path, and places so many miracles in our lives. And yet we do not have eyes to recognize them and often miss them. But he still waits for us, still loves us, arguably even more because his heart is “sorrowful unto death”–since he is not closer to us.

I am reminded of the Prophet Isaiah’s words, “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you. See, upon the palms of my hands I have engraved you; your walls are ever before me” (Is 49:15-16).

This is our faith, that God will never forget us, he will never let go of us, even if we falter, even if others abandon us.

This week was not only one of grief but of hope. Of course I feel much consolation knowing that the child now lives in the tender embrace of Jesus and Mary.

I also have great hope in the mercy and love of God, because if human love can stretch the hearts of so many zealous, yet imperfect, souls, then how much more does Our Lord’s Heart swell with compassion for all of us who are in great need of His Mercy?

I am forever grateful to all of you who prayed and continue to pray for the woman and her child, and I am certain that the graces from those prayers and offerings will indeed touch that woman’s soul, even if we never get to see the fruit. To all of you, I pray that in Heaven this woman will be able to thank you personally and tell you of the great things that your prayers and the love of our Heavenly Father have done for her.

Let’s talk about love

By Christopher Smith, OP

Love. Love. Love.

It is word used quite often in church circles. And rightly so. I mean, the bible might mention something about love once or twice. Okay, actually it’s closer to 772 times in 649 different verses of scripture, but who’s counting? (RSVCE edition).

The trouble with so many references to love in the bible, and in Christianity, is it can be such a nebulous word. In fact, it can mean almost as many things inside the church as it does outside the church. That can lead to some real confusion.

With this post I hope to clear up some of that confusion. If I succeed – great! If I don’t then the worse thing that could be said about me is that I only contributed to the already blaring cacophony of people offering their ideas on the subject.

First, since I am talking about love in the Christian context, it seems only appropriate to use Jesus’ words, life, and actions as the benchmark to measure our own words, lives, and actions. The gospel accounts show Jesus as fundamentally oriented towards his father’s will. So to begin with we too must orient our lives towards God’s will. There can be no divided heart in us, serving two masters. We must not be consumed with the pursuit of wealth and/or honors, even our family is to be considered second when it comes to showing where our allegiance belongs (cf. Mt 6:19-21, Mk 10:42-44, Lk 14:26).

Second, what we know about God’s will is that it does not waver (ST I, Q.19, A7). What we can also know about God, and his will, is that he wills nothing for himself. He is not in search of more power, greater glory, or mankind’s servitude. Humanity can do nothing to enhance or make greater the glory which God already possesses. God’s will then, since it is not self-serving, is to provide for mankind’s well-being. From the first verse of the bible to the last, God wills for a definitive and comprehensive good for mankind (i.e. salvation). God wills life, joy, peace, freedom, and happiness for each individual and the whole of humanity (ST I, Q.19 A2).

Third, since God’s will is directed towards the well-being of mankind, and we are to follow Jesus’ example of orienting our lives to the will of the father, then it should become clear now that our will should be directed at service towards men and women.

It is really quite simple, in theory. Since we can not do anything which can greater God’s glory nor can we adequately praise him for the abundance of his mercy, and since God is not interested in receiving that type of worship anyway but in the bettering mankind, then our focus should be on loving our neighbor. Too often, we become so busy “serving God” that we forget to serve others around us. However, “serving God” never excuses us from our duty to serve our neighbor. In fact, it is in serving (i.e loving) our neighbor that our service to God is proved.

I must say at this point, while not wanting to get too far off course, I am not advocating for us to stop worshipping God because it “doesn’t do any good anyway.” There is “good” accomplished by praising God; St Thomas Aquinas notes at least three (ST II, II Q.91, A1). He writes:

“Consequently we need to praise God with our lips, not indeed for His sake, but for our own sake; since by praising Him our devotion is aroused towards Him…”
“And forasmuch as man, by praising God, ascends in his affections to God, by so much is he withdrawn from things opposed to God…”
“The praise of the lips is also profitable to others by inciting their affections towards God…”

Additionally, we need to continue to receive the sacraments for they are the means by which God gives us the graces to live like his son (cf. CCC 1070, CCC 1131).

Returning now to Jesus, our benchmark, we must ask ourselves, “What is love to Jesus?”

To used a well worn phrase: “actions speak louder than words.” Jesus’ idea of love is not talk, but action.

Jesus summed up the entirety of this life and works by identifying the two “greatest” commandments:

He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment (Mt 22:37-38).

Followed by:

And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mt 22:39).

When we consider what “loving God” means, I think we can see it as some kind of mystical union with the Lord, where we retreat to a private place in order to fully take in the experience. Even if a person is graced with having those types of experiences, as we read about in the lives of many of the saints, there is still a need to fulfill the second commandment and that cannot be done in isolation. Even the most mystically inclined saints came out of their cells to minister to others.

The fourth point I’d like to make is that our actions, if they are truly to resemble Jesus’ and manifest the will of the father, can not be selfishly motivated. We should not attempt to call the Lord’s attention (or other people’s) to our actions. Reaching out to our fellow man can not be our attempt at scoring “brownie points” with God.

In the story of the final judgment, Jesus says neither the sheep nor the goats recognized him in the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, or the prisoner. The difference was the sheep, those at Jesus’ right, didn’t care. They helped those in need anyway. Those are the ones who inherit the kingdom. Had the goats, those at Jesus’ left, known Jesus was present in the needy, they would have helped, but their motivation for helping would have been all wrong (Mt 25:31-46).

A fifth observation I would like to point out is that “love of mankind” is too general and does not meet the criteria of following Jesus’ example of dedication to his father’s will. Jesus never spoke in terms of loving humanity universally, but in much more concrete terms. As Hans Kung noted in his book, On Being a Christian, “A kiss of that kind costs nothing: it is not like kissing this one sick, imprisoned, underprivileged, starving man.” Pope Francis recently gave the world an example of what a real concrete love looks like when he embraced and kissed a man covered in boils.

We can not, using Jesus’ example in scripture, think some abstract universal love of mankind is what Jesus was commanding his disciples to do when he told them to love their neighbor. The measuring stick Jesus gives his disciples for how to love one’s neighbor is one they should have been familiar with as he reminded them of a teaching from the Old Testament’s Holiness Code:

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord (Lv 19:18)

Loving oneself not only implies how much we should love our neighbor, since our nature is to protect and take care of ourselves, but it also implies proximity. Our neighbor must be close to us!

We can see clearly now that love of God and love of neighbor has the same foundation; specifically, they are built on the concepts of abandonment of selfishness and the will to self-sacrifice. Only when we no longer live for ourselves can we be unreservedly open to God and to others (Lk 17:33).

We are still not done yet. The sixth part of this post on love is, Jesus revealing the perfect will of his father in the command to “love your enemies” (Mt 5:43-48). This goes far beyond the “golden rule” which can be found in various expressions in the other religions of the world. Many of the world’s religions, to include Jesus’ own Judaism, while espousing the golden rule still favored hating one’s enemy.

By saying we must love our enemies, did Jesus take things too far? By asking for some kind of moral perfectionism, as he does after issuing this command (i.e. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48)), isn’t Jesus setting us up for failure?

To be sure, we will all fail during our attempts to love God, ourselves, our neighbor, and our enemy. However, what did you expect from God? What did you expect of Jesus? To give less than all? To draw a line in the sand and say, “You only have to love to this point, no further?”

In the commandment to love one’s neighbor there is still room for selfishness to creep in which is why Jesus expands the teaching to include one’s enemy. A neighbor, which could include family, friends, fellow countrymen, members of the same clan, etc., would likely be inclined to reciprocate your loving action. Therefore, desire for reciprocation could be our motivating factor, thus preventing us from loving as Jesus did.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Lk 6:32-35).

Human love, if it is truly to reflect God’s love, as shown in Jesus’ living example, must incorporate all that is good about our humanity. While many times our decision to love is just that, a decision of the will, a love like God’s will also include emotion, vitality, creativity, and affection, the things we typically reserve for those closest to us, and offer it to our enemies. To love like Jesus, we must hold nothing back.