CHAPTER THE FOURTH

 

Living a Love Filled Life

 

I can’t think of a single person who would want to live a loveless existence. What a sorry state that would be. I really can’t imagine anyone, who in the very depths and core of their heart is not longing to love and to be loved. Yes, even that miserable old grouch we all know. Or that mean person who drives everyone away that cares about them, even they want to be loved. How do I know this? I’m glad you asked. Besides food, water and oxygen is the perhaps even greater basic human need to love and to be loved. It is at the very core of this unique being we call the human person. Having been made in the image and likeness of God, and redeemed and sanctified in Christ, we humans reflect, in all aspects of our being, God who is love. Love, we can dare say, is the nature of God. Because God is love He dwells in a Trinity of Persons. The Son being the fullness of the love of the Father which proceeds forth without beginning or end. The Son loving the Father in return with the fullness of His love. Their Love meeting, without beginning or end, spirates forth He who is the love of the Father and the Son poured forth. He whom we call the “Uncreated Immaculate Conception” (St. Maximillian Mary Kolbe), or known to all of us as the Holy Spirit.

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It is in this image that we are made, in love’s image and likeness. At the very core of our person is the reflection of the love divine. From the very beginning of man’s creation, this reality has always expressed itself through the gift of Holy Matrimony. Marriage has been the greatest vehicle for

reflecting the total self-gift of one person to another and their union becoming an incarnate reality in a child. To this very day marriage remains as a haven for total self-gifted love. Many discerning their vocation and who have a well-developed sense of this selfless Christian marriage we speak of, will often wonder how anyone could take a vow of celibacy or chastity and “forego love”. I have heard young people say, “I could never live without someone to love or to love me!” I was indeed glad to hear them say that. At the same time, I was saddened to see that they really believe that celibacy or chastity is a negative vow. A vow not to love.

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It is true that celibacy (as taken by diocesan priest) and chastity (the vow of religious) has the “negative” aspect of choosing never to marry. However, it is anything but a choice not to love. In all truth, we can say that it is a vow to love with one’s whole mind, soul, heart and strength. If anything, the vows of celibacy and chastity, far from being a vow not to love, comes from a heart so full of love that their love could never be satisfied by loving only one individual or even several in a family. A heart given to celibacy and chastity is a heart that possesses the capacity to love the whole of mankind.

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When one is called to the life of chastity/celibacy the person is not called because they would make a bad husband or a bad wife. Why would God call to Himself a man or woman who did not have a heart capable of being a total self-gift? Especially if the vocation to priesthood and religious life is supposed to reflect the total self-gift of Christ, the Groom, to His bride the Church and vice versa. On the contrary, the person called to religious life and priesthood are those who would make the best husband or wife, or at least possess the potential to be so. The person called by God must develop the already present potential to be a total self-gift. They are called to make of themselves a loving self-gift and to live, perpetually, here on earth and onto heaven, an act of love to God and to all. The

cloistered nun, the hermit, the friar, the monk, the active sister and, yes, even the diocesan priest are called to live in love and become the greatest lovers the world has known. By their vows of chastity or celibacy they love! Love, expressed in a sexual relationship of marriage, is a very limited way of loving. A non-sexual total self-gift that expresses itself through prayer, penance, ministry and fraternal charity extends far beyond the mere physical. It is a supernatural way of loving, it is loving in a way that Christ has loved us. They, like Christ, offer their bodies as an acceptable sacrifice pleasing to the Lord.

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Let’s look at it this way, “Lord, I love you with my whole mind, soul, heart and strength”. The Lord is not one love among many, but the only love. One who vows themselves to the Lord, loves as the Lord loves all and serves all as Christ serves us. There is a conformity to Christ in such a way that the heart learns to see with the merciful and loving glance of Christ. The religious, aware of their union to Christ, tries to see what Christ sees in the sinner. They can see not the sinner, but the saint that God knows that person is called to be. Born in an intimate, unbreakable union with Christ, the religious seeks to love that saint hiding under the terrible chain to sin. Even in the cloister, in the private hidden life of prayer, the chaste and celibate soul offers unceasing acts of penance as an act of love for the conversion of that sinner.

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Let’s face it, without love, the religious life is pointless, and so would be marriage. Love is not a feeling or an emotion. It is a choice. It is a serious choice to lay down one’s life for the good of another. We know that it must be a choice and not a feeling because our Lord calls us to do the unthinkable, the last thing we feel like doing, “Love your enemies”. None of us “feel” like doing that. The person whom the Lord has chosen for His own and calls to a life of chastity and celibacy is called to a life of true love. After all, they are called by Love with a loving glance.

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When St. Mark describes the call of the rich young man he is sure to tell us of our Lord’s disposition. The rich young man, after professing his fidelity to the commandments since birth, receives his divine call to not only poverty but also to chastity. St. Mark tells us that Jesus, looking at him “Loved him”. It is with this loving glance that the Lord called the young man to abandon all and follow. Pope St. John Paul II, in a document on religious life, says that every religious vocation begins with the loving glance of Christ. He calls us with love and only with love. He calls us because He is in love with us and so He calls us to be in love with Him. It is a call to love.

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This is not to say that one who is called to marriage is not called to be love in this world. Or, somehow God loves them less. Certainly not! But what we can say is that the religious is invited by the Lord to love Him with a direct public vow, to love Him as their spouse and by loving Him, to love all. How else was St. Paul to become “all things to all people”. It is the vow of chastity that allowed him the freedom to love in such a way that he not only laid down his life for Christ, but he also laid it down for all whom he served. Only a chaste heart can become all things to all people so as to save at least some. It desires to save all. That’s why it becomes all things. However, like our Lord, Paul could not control free will.

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The sad part about what we are saying is that it is possible to reject that loving glance of the Lord. We think to ourselves, how could anyone refuse the loving glance of LOVE. Easy, free will! That poor rich young man was a good man. He observed the commandments, he was faithful. Our Lord “loved him”. But, because he feared to live without that which he loved, the goods of this world, he never got to experience the fullest extent of Divine Love. Called to be an apostle, an evangelist, perhaps even a martyr. He wanders off into an obscure place of history forever to be known as “The Rich Young Man”. We can only wonder how often he thought back to that day and wondered what would have happened if he had said “yes” to love, a chaste love, a love of total self-gift. Yes, the self-gift meant giving up everything. His monies, his possessions, indeed his very life was asked of him. Love never asks for a little, Love always asks and requires everything. No holding back!

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The scary part is that we too can say no to the loving glance of Christ. If this young man, who looked into the very physical loving eyes of Jesus could say “NO”, how much more so do we, who have to depend on intuition and the grace of discernment and prayer. We may very well be thinking that we won’t choose chastity or celibacy because we don’t want to give up love. However, it could be that in following our own way of loving, we may miss true love all together. As we have said in earlier reflections, the vocation is God’s choice. It is our choice to say yes or no to that Divine choice. It is only in fulfilling God’s choice that we will experience the full love that we are capable of experiencing. In the same way, only by responding with complete generosity will we be able to love to the fullest extent of our ability.

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Let me make it clear in reaffirming that marriage is also a call to love and be loved. However, it varies significantly from the love that one both experiences and expresses in the religious or clerical state. A married person forms a family, a mini-Church or a microcosm of the Church. Husbands loving their wives as Christ loves the Church. Wives living in union with their husbands as the church does with Christ. Their love bringing forth life in the gift of children. The religious and the priest lives in the microcosm. They love Christ and the Church in a direct act of love bringing forth spiritual souls in union with Him.

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As a Franciscan, I am always drawn back to the example of my Seraphic Father. Besides our Lord and our Lady, it would be harder to find a heart more full of love than St. Francis. We can say that his whole life was a lesson of chaste love. His poverty, his obedience, his entire existence was drawn from and ordered to love. The loves of his life were not carnal and yet he loved all carnal things. His love for the Eucharist, our Lady, the Cross, the Church, and even nature shows that he was not a man who chose chastity because he did not want to love or be loved! On the contrary, his choice was to love!

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Early in the conversion of St. Francis he went into a cave to pray. There in solitude and quiet he was making restitution for his past sins. Overcome with the horror of his sins and the sufferings our Lord endured to redeem him, St. Francis wept and wept bitterly. There, overcome with grief, our Lord appeared to him hanging upon the cross. There, in the face of Christ Crucified, St. Francis’ sins met Divine Mercy. He came to see that even though he committed such horrible evils and deserved the just condemnation of hell, Our Lord allowed His Mercy to triumph over His Justice. For the first time in his life, St. Francis experienced selfless, self-gifted love. It became as real as real gets! Bursting into sobbing, with tears of joy that were shaking the core of his heart, St. Francis cried out over and over again “Love is not Loved! Love is not Loved!” When asked what he meant by these words, in tears he explained, “Christ crucified! No one loves Him anymore! Love is not Loved!” It was that experience that made St. Francis the lover that he became. From that point on he decided that he was going to love Love. Only a chaste celibate can have the freedom to love Love and love Love alone. St. Francis did not vow himself to chastity, because he was through with love! No! He did not choose chastity because he had enough with bad relationships! Just the opposite, he had the greatest of lovers and chose to enter into the Divine Romance. Yes, romance! Does that scandalize you? It shouldn’t. After all, humanity has been part of this romance since the dawn of creation. Created to love and created for love our human nature will not rest until it rests in God who is Love. If

God is calling us to priesthood or religious life we need to get out of our heads any notion of it being a loveless life. Sure, certain physical pleasures associated with marital love are given up, but there is a love far deeper in the vow of chastity and celibacy. If we fear that religious life or priesthood will be a loveless life, then we truly do not yet understand the vocation. We can even say that we don’t know God as well as we might think we do. Could God, who is Love, and knows the humanity He Himself created, withhold the truest form of love from a soul that has vowed itself to love Him? Of course not!

Don’t be afraid to love in a chaste way. Fear not the celibate love of the priesthood. Stop worrying over whether or not you will be giving up love forever. You won’t be! You will be choosing to love in the most perfect way. Jesus was chaste, yet He loved. He was celibate, yet He loved with a love beyond all others. Why are we so afraid?

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Finally, I invite you to read the lives of the saints, or re-read them. Ask yourself if those were love-less people. Look carefully at their words, their actions and their writings and see how often they experienced the love of God and how often they strove to love. The most loving eyes I have ever seen were those of a woman who at a young age vowed herself to chastity. This woman spent her life loving and the world flocked to her. Yes, the eyes of Mother Theresa were the most clear and loving eyes I have ever seen or will ever see on this side of Heaven. They were chaste eyes that had seen the loving glance of Christ and heard the words “Go sell all you have and give it to the poor, then come follow me”. Her answer, unlike the rich young man, was a lifelong drawn out loving “Yes!”

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Lectio for Chapter the Fifth

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1 Kings 19:9-12

And there he came to a cave, and lodged there; and behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Eli′jah?” He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the people of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thy altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.” And he said, “Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.