Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Ordinary People, Extraordinary Love

                 

Occasionally I'll learn a new word, and I'm jarred when I realize that so many other people know that word and all my life I did not know it.  And soon after, I'm hearing it and seeing it other places, and I'm like "oh, there it is!"  I wonder if that's sometimes how we are when it comes to God talking to us.

I have learned that Love is our highest calling.  Love is the meaning of life. All you need is love (love is all you need). In the end, there is only love.  God is love.

We are flooded with that message. But I'm not sure it can be absorbed every time we receive it.

Lately this message has been following me around, and I'm trying to pay attention.  In the wake of several tragedies and a major natural disaster, our minds have been turned to what really matters. Should I be grinding my teeth about the messy kitchen that awaited me when I came home from my exercise class? Should I be belly-aching about how humid the house feels now that it's warming up outside? Should I be obsessing about how many activities we can afford to do this summer on a limited budget?  Well, I am human after all. But still, these are first world problems and there's nothing like a tragedy to shake us up and remind us of Whom we depend upon, for everything.

Why does it take a tragedy to bring out the most beautiful side of humanity? It seems to ask a question to which we can't help but respond, from a place deep within, the place where Love dwells. Love awakens and springs into action before we realize what is happening.

It seems that until everything is taken away, we can not see clearly about what remains when all else is gone.

But to live with this clear, unobstructed vision every day, with purpose and conviction? We're not cut out for that!!! Yet we are called to do exactly that. To expect to meet Jesus in the people around us, the ones who are easy for us to love and the ones who are not easy for us to love. To do ordinary things like balance bills, car payments and mortgages, and in the same day do extraordinary things like Love, to experience our divine calling, our salvation.

We may not all be able to reach our arms out to malnourished children on the African continent, or bring a blanket and a cup of tea to someone in Oklahoma who has lost their home due to a tornado. But our prayers mean just as much.  Ordinary, every day choices to Love can be extraordinary efforts that impact the Body of Christ beyond what we may ever understand.

Be encouraged in your calling to Love. It's what we're here to do, and designed for eternity to do.



ISt. Therese know of one means only by which to attain to perfection: LOVE. Let us love, since our heart is made for nothing else. Sometimes I seek another word to express Love, but in this land of exile the word which begins and ends (St. Augustine) is quite incapable of rendering the vibrations of the soul; we must then adhere to this simple and only word: TO LOVE.
― Thérèse de Lisieux


To help the victims of the tornado in Oklahoma, visit:

http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/