REAL LOVE IS NOT A FEELING YOU HAVE, BUT A DECISION YOU MAKE

 

I am convinced that nothing, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor the present, nor the future, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:35, 37-39

This “unconditional love” that God has for each one of us, whether we are his friends or his enemies, in good times and in bad, sounds like our traditional wedding vows! It is the template for how we are to love each other, whether they are good or bad, our friends or our enemies!  Loving each other, like God loves us, is the very heart and essence of our Christian faith. This love is not based on the feelings we have for each other, but on the choices we make about how we want to respond to each other, day in and day out!

It might surprise you to know that the last fifty-six years of my life has been about trying my best to love other people, even unlovable people, “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, until death do us part” and thereby set an example for them about God’s unconditional love for all of us.  To free me up to do this, to be able to focus mainly on that, I made a Promise of Celibacy.

Celibates can live without sex, but they cannot live without loving others and being loved by them. Just as one can have sex without love, one can love without sex. A “close loving relationship” is called “intimacy.”  Intimacy requires sharing oneself deeply with others, sometimes with sex and more often without it. Love involves developing caring connections with people. A deeply caring connection is fundamental to truly “loving” anyone!

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that there are two Sacraments geared toward the salvation of others: Marriage and Holy Orders. That means marriage partners and those who are ordained are both called to be “love-givers.” Marriage partners are called to be “love-givers” mainly to their spouses and their children. Those who are ordained are called to be “love-givers” mainly to that part of the church entrusted to them by the bishop in whatever ministry they are assigned. We are both called to be “love-givers” - love-givers to both friends and enemies, no matter what, whether it feels good or not, on any particular day! Love is not a feeling you have, but a decision you make.

I am proud to say that I have a wide-range of intimate friends! I am friends with people I grew up with, with people I went to seminary with, with people I have met in ministry and with people I have met from various countries all over the world. I have women friends, long-time friends both male and female, whole-family friends, friends from other religions, friends without any religion, rich friends and poor friends, educated and uneducated friends, new friends, old friends and friends who used to be enemies.

Jesus talked a lot, and often, about the importance of the word “love.” In our American culture, we talk a lot, and often, about the word “love” as well. Even though we both throw the word “love” around a lot, we are not talking about the same reality.

When we talk about “love” in our culture, we mean “having strong feelings of attraction for someone or something.” We say, things like “I “love” my girlfriend ever since we “fell in love.” I “love” the way she looks and the way she talks. We “love” the same movies, books and music. What the person is actually saying there is that he is “attracted” to everything about her – from her looks to her tastes. “Love” in that context is basically a “feeling” one has – usually a “feeling of attraction for” this or that!

Because it is basically a “feeling of attraction for,” that kind of so-called “love” can shift, wane and even disappear. Because it is based on “feelings,” a person who easily “falls in love,” can also “fall out of love” just as easily. Because it is based on “feelings,” it is basically “self-centered.” At its core, it really expresses what that old 1990s Toyota commercial said about their cars: “I love what you do for me!” A more precise word for that experience is “cathexis,” meaning an intense investment of mental or emotional energy in a person or object. A person under the spell of “cathexis” has an almost blind fixation or an obsession with another person, object or idea for “what it can do for them.”

That’s not at all what Jesus meant when he talked about “love.” When Jesus talked about “love,” he was not talking about a “feeling,” he was talking about a “decision.” When Jesus talked about “love,” he talked about making a decision to take loving and constructive action toward a person that he or she may consciously dislike or even find repugnant in some way! To “love,” in the way Jesus talks about it, goes beyond any feelings. It rises to the level of a conscious “decision” and that decision is not “self-centered, but “other centered.”

The teaching about “love” in our second reading today is quite powerful! God's “love” is unconditional - God’s actions toward us in spite of our actions toward God. True “love” is not focused on what we receive, but on what we give! That is the relationship God wants to have with us – a mutual unconditional relationship of love with friends and enemies! Love is not a feeling you have, but a decision you make.

Let me give you two practical examples of true “other focused” love - one from the lives of some of the families I have known and the other example from my own life.

EXAMPLE ONE

I am reminded, first of all, by a quote from the Gospel of John that says, “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Yes, it certainly refers to the love God had for us when we see how Jesus laid down his life for us! However, what also comes to my mind is the love many parents have for their children. These parents are the most loving people I have ever encountered. They are willing to lay down their lives every day for their children. I am not referring to that common practice of crippling children by constantly giving into their whims and spoiling them, rather than training them in self-discipline. Spoiling them is not real love, that’s self-love and protecting themselves from not being liked by their children!

It takes a lot of other-focused love to raise a child well because raising a child into a thriving adult requires teaching them reliability, generosity, consistency, independence, responsibility, maturity, self-confidence and kindness by promoting positive behaviors, being clear about expectations, adopting positive language, modeling good behavior, offering them choices, helping them deal with the consequences of their own choices, showing them how to do active listening, reinforcing positive values and correcting them when they do wrong.  These actions and this teaching, year in and year out, is the essence of real love. Doing that, day in and day out, does not always feel good! It requires a great amount of attention and concentration! That kind of love does not always result in a positive response from their children, like feeling appreciated by the very children they are teaching and forming into thriving adults! Love is not a feeling you have, but a decision you make.

EXAMPLE TWO

The second example of “love,” from my own life, involves the decisions I made when I retired. I have been taught my whole life that retirement is a time to sit back, relax, enjoy oneself and be pampered. I did not know exactly what I wanted to do when I retired, but I definitely knew I did not want to do that!

For my 80th birthday, a wealthy friend of mine offered to plan a birthday party for me. As a priest, I have been called to be a “love-giver” more than a “love-getter” so I told her “no” because that year, in gratitude for making it to my 80th birthday with so much to be grateful for, I wanted to “give,” rather than “receive.” I told her that, in celebration, I wanted to personally underwrite the Diocese of Kingstown’s annual diocesan Christmas party down in the poor country of St. Vincent and the Grenadines where I used to volunteer until COVID hit and their volcano exploded. The bishop down there usually gives his 12 priests, 4 Religious Sisters, 4 Religious Brothers, 7 Deacons and 4 Chancery Staff members a bottle of inexpensive wine, a ham and a small monetary gift. I heard that his diocesan finances were so limited that year, where the minimum wage is $12.00 a day, that he would have to cut back and not be able to give them a small monetary gift that year. So, starting with my $1,000.00 tax refund, I decided on a personal goal of underwriting his whole diocesan Christmas party, as well as be able to give all 40 of them a small monetary gift.

I was so grateful on my 80th birthday, that I had a burning desire to “give” love, rather than “receive” it!” In our country where “love” is more and more about something we “receive,” rather than something we “give,” I wanted to go against that trend and be that “love-giver” that I am supposed to be as a priest! Giving, rather than receiving, is what really made me happy on my 80th birthday so that is what I did!

After that, rather than me traveling the world and enjoying myself on some beach, I decided to help build a church in Kenya, a home for a single mother and a new grade school in Tanzania (which opened last Thursday with its first 25 students and 35 more expected by January) while helping out in two nursing homes. two parishes, publishing my four times a week inspirational blog posts and leading short parish retreats here in the diocese. 

In telling you this, it is not my hope to get you to admire me for doing those things, but that these two examples will inspire you to perform similar “love-giving” actions, for your family, friends, strangers and even your enemies! That, my friends, is what real love is all about! As the Book of Proverbs says, “Those who water others, will themselves be watered.” Real love is not an exchange of warm feelings between you and somebody else! Love is not a feeling you have, but a decision you make. Real love is a “decision” you make to do good to others, even to those who cannot, or will not, be good to you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHURCH CHAT #39

 

RIGHT UNDER OUR VERY NOSES

Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus,

“Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” He said

to them in reply, “An evil and unfaithful generation

seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the 

sign of Jonah the prophet.

Matthew 12:38-42

This gospel reminds me of something St. Paul said in his first Letter to the Corinthians 1:22. He said, “The Jews demand signs and the Greeks look for wisdom.” Paul is saying there that it was characteristic of the Jews of his day to ask for signs and wonders from those who claimed to be messengers of God. It was as if they said, “If you are so special, so God-sent, prove your claims by doing something extraordinary.”

Jesus refused to give them the “sign” they wanted because they were guilty of one fundamental mistake. They desired to see God in the abnormal; they forgot that we are never nearer God, and God never shows himself to us so much and so continually as he does in the ordinary things of every day.

I am reminded of the great poem of Elizabeth Barret Browning where she says, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes, the rest sit around and pluck blackberries.”

My friends, the bottom line of this gospel is that God comes to us especially in the very ordinary, rather than the spectacular and dramatic, events of life. The Scribes and Pharisees were always looking for “signs” – dramatic and spectacular happenings and personalities to “prove” that God was active in the world. Truly, God is to be found in the ordinary events, in the ordinary moments and in the ordinary people of this world. That is why so many people missed Jesus when he was here on this earth. He was so ordinary, while they were looking for something spectacular. While they were looking “out there” and “up there,” while they were looking among the famous and the powerful and the well-connected, God’s “sign” was standing right in front of them. They missed him because he was just too ordinary.  Jesus tells them that the only sign they will be given   is his preaching and wisdom – better than the preaching of Jonah to the people of Nineveh and the wisdom of Solomon that the queen of the south sought out in her day.

 

Our traditional Christmas story is told by the evangelist, Luke. Luke wrote for the underdog, the little people, the left-out, the losers of the world. When he tells the story, he emphasizes the dismalness of Christ’ birth: a poor young mother delivering her baby in a barn amid the smell of dung and donkey breath; greasy, crusty, bumbling sheep herders; doves dropping their stuff from the rafters; the restlessness of cows and no one to care. Luke wants his readers to know that God comes, not just for the rich and famous and powerful, the young and healthy, but especially for the lowest of the low, in the most desperate of circumstances. God comes for, and loves, every human being who has ever lived on this planet no matter how insignificant they may be in the eyes of others.

 

Where should we look for God working in our world today? Fatima? Medjugorje? Lourdes?  I am sure God has worked there, but we don’t have to go to those places to see God working. He is working right here, right under our noses, right now in this very place! We just have the eyes to see it! We just need to look at this place, and the people in it, through the lens of faith! Miracles are happening every day, right here and right now! As Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke (10:23-24)

“Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."

 

 

 

THOSE WHO ARE CURIOUS SEE THE WORLD DIFFERENTLY

I have stated many times, in speeches to priests around the world and in my weekly blog posts, that "the biggest shortage in the Catholic Church is not priests or money, but imagination." It seems to me that our lack of imagination is being stunted by our lack of curiosity about new and untried ways. The "old" is important, yes, but so is the "new!" Therefore, I would like to share with you 75 quotes about "curiosity" from some of the world's great thinkers. 

1. “Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.” – Aaron Swartz

2. “Replace fear of the unknown with curiosity.” – Billy Cox

3. “The best in business have boundless curiosity and open minds.” – Robin Sharma

4. “It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent, lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It's as simple as that.” – Tove Jansson

5. “Let your curiosity lead you down a road that is less traveled.” – ATGW

6. “The love of knowledge is a kind of madness.” – C.S. Lewis

7. “I set out to discover the why of it, and to transform my pleasure into knowledge.” – Charles Baudelaire

8. “Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.” – Samuel Johnson

9. “When curiosity is alive, we are attracted to many things; we discover many worlds.” – Eric Booth

10. “Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.” – Samuel Johnson

11. “Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

12. “Human curiosity, the urge to know, is a powerful force and is perhaps the best secret weapon of all in the struggle to unravel the workings of the natural world.” – Aaron Klug

13. “I want people to believe in themselves. I want intellectual curiosity. I want someone who realizes that they don't know it all and that they're dying to learn.” – Kevin Plank

14. “Curiosity, the rover, and the concept is what science is all about: the quest to reveal the unknown.” – Ahmed Zewail

15. “Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.” – James Stephens

16. “Curiosity is lying in wait for every secret.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

17. “I had discovered that learning something, no matter how complex, wasn't hard when I had a reason to want to know it.” – Homer Hickam

18. “If you can let go of passion and follow your curiosity, your curiosity just might lead you to your passion.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

19. “A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.” – Chinese Proverb

20. “I think I benefited from being equal parts ambitious and curious. And of the two, curiosity has served me best.” – Michael J Fox

21. “A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth. To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance.” – Eliezer Yudkowsky

22. “Curiosity about life in all aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” – Leo Burnett

23. “It is so important to allow children to bloom and to be driven by their curiosity.” – May-Britt Moser

24. “You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.” – Anonymous

25. “Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.” – Arnold Edinborough

26. “Curiosity is the fuel for discovery, inquiry, and learning.” – Anonymous

27. “Lean into your curiosity about any issue, and there will likely be people to share a little bit more of their knowledge and insight and give you ideas on how to make change.” – Opal Tometi

28. “I'm always wondering about the what-ifs, about the road not taken.” – Jenny Han

29. “Creatures whose mainspring is curiosity enjoy the accumulating of facts far more than the pausing at times to reflect on those facts.” – Clarence Day

30. “Remember that things are not always as they appear to be. Curiosity creates possibilities and opportunities.” – Roy T. Bennett

31. “I think that we all absolutely have curiosity. It brings about knowledge. It's energizing. It's spiritually empowering. It makes us more interesting as people.” – Brian Grazer

32. “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” – Marie Curie

33. “People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.” – Leo Rosten

34. “Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.” – Richard Whately

35. “Healthy curiosity is a great key in innovation.” – Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

36. “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” – Dorothy Parker

37. “Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.” – Linus Pauling

38. “Curiosity is a willing, a proud, and eager confession of ignorance.” – S. Leonard Rubinstein

39. “Curiosity is the lust of the mind.” – Thomas Hobbes

40. “Those with less curiosity or ambition just mumble that God works in mysterious ways. I intend to catch him in the act.” – Damien Echols

41. “Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead.” – Susan Sontag

42. “You can find a mentor; you have to ask questions, you have to show interest in what the other person is doing. You have to have curiosity, I think that people appreciate that and will want to help you.” – Nina Garcia

43. “What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be curiosity.” – Eve Arnold

44. “Curiosity is the single most important attribute with which humans are born. More than a simple desire to discover or know things, curiosity is a powerful tool, like a scalpel or a searchlight. Curiosity changes us. It is also a way to effect change, perhaps even on a global level.” – Loren Rhoads

45. “The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers.” – Bryan Magee

46. “Learning is by nature curiosity, prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained.” – Philo

47. “I love learning, and I think that curiosity is a wonderful gift.” – Andie MacDowell

48. “Curiosity takes ignorance seriously, and is confident enough to admit when it does not know. It is aware of not knowing, and it sets out to do something about it.” – Alain de Botton

49. “I am generally fascinated by what are the big, challenging questions, and that’s behind my curiosity.” – Paul Allen

50. “One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.” – William Lyon Phelps

51. “If one has curiosity, then one stands the chance of attaining a high level of scientific inquiry.” – Ada Yonath

52. “I'm naturally curious, and I've always been driven by my curiosity. Curiosity gets people excited. Curiosity leads to new ideas, new jobs, new industries.” – Anne Sweeney

53. “An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.” – David Attenborough

54. “My favorite words are possibilities, opportunities and curiosity. I think if you are curious, you create opportunities, and then if you open the doors, you create possibilities.” – Mario Testino

55. “Critical thinking and curiosity are the key to creativity.” – Amala Akkineni

56. “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” – Albert Einstein

57. “We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” – Walt Disney

58. “It's sort of a mental attitude about critical thinking and curiosity. It's about mindset of looking at the world in a playful and curious and creative way.” – Adam Savage

59. “I have a certain curiosity for life that drives me and propels me forward.” – Rachel McAdams

60. “Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance.” – William Wirt

61. “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” – Albert Einstein

62. “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” – Zora Neale Hurston

63. “Intelligence follows curiosity.” – James Clear

64. “If you aren't curious about it, you'll never be good at it.” – Naval Ravikant

65. “Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness.” – Bryant H. McGill

66. “Follow your genuine intellectual curiosity is a better foundation for a career than following whatever is making money right now.” – Naval Ravikant

67. “Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures.” – Lovelle Drachman

68. “The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.” – Albert Einstein

69. “Be curious, not judgmental.” – Ted Lasso

70. “Curiosity is life. Assumption is death.” – Mark Parker

71. “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” – Plutarch

72. “Curiosity killed the cat, but where human beings are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance.” – Harry Lorayne

73. “If you are curious, you'll find the puzzles around you. If you are lazy, you'll find the shortcuts.” – John C. Maxwell

74. “Curiosity does, no less than devotion, pilgrims make.” – Abraham Cowley

75. “I keep six honest serving-men, they taught me all I knew; their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.” – Rudyard Kipling

 

 

 

THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER: WHO NEEDS TO CHANGE, GOD OR ME?

God answered Solomon’s prayer in these words,

“Because you have asked for this---not for a long life

for yourself, nor for riches, nor for the life of your

enemies, but for understanding so that you may know

what is right---I do as you requested.”

I Kings 3:5,7-12

I own a lot of books, even though I have culled through them several times over the years, especially when it comes to moving from one house to the next! Most of them, I rarely look at, even though I go digging through them for something every now and them. There are, however, a few books, maybe 10 in all, that I would really hate to lose, books that have changed my life in one way or another. One of those books is a 56 year-old book by Fr. Louis Evely entitled Our Prayer. It was the book that helped me really understand what prayer is all about! I turn to it often, especially when I talk to groups about the role of prayer in their lives! It’s now out of print! I would really hate to lose my copy! 

The insight I got from that book changed my prayer life and helped me make sense of the purpose of prayer.  I had prayed all my life, but I didn’t feel that it was doing all that much good.  I was like that old farmer in one of my former parishes who said that he never prayed for rain because “God’s goina do what God’s goina do anyway!” No matter how much I prayed, it has always seemed to me to that “God was goina’ do what God was goina’ do anyway.” That old book helped me discover that, even though I believed in Jesus and I thought I believed in prayer, I was actually praying like a pagan! 

How do pagans pray?  They whine, beg, cringe and try to bribe their moody, mean and reluctant gods to loosen up and give them what they want! Their prayers are attempts to inform their gods of things that need to be done as well as how and when they should be done! Their prayers are attempts to get their gods to wake up and pay attention! Their prayers are an attempt to get their gods to change their minds and moods and do what they want through bribery or self-inflicted pain! Pagan prayer has been portrayed best in those old TV jungle movies. In those old movies, it was almost always the same. Poor people lived at the foot of an active volcano where they believed that their god lived! Their volcano god was moody and unpredictable and often blew his top, killing hundreds of their people. To get this god to be good to them, they lived in fear of him and their prayer was basically bribes to keep him at bay and do their bidding. Their sadistic god loved pain, especially pain that involved the shedding of blood.  So, if you cut yourself or whipped yourself till you bled, you had a better chance of getting a favor out of him. If that didn’t work, you threw the prettiest virgin in town into the bubbling lava!  Pagan prayer was always an effort to get the god to change his mind or change his sadistic behaviors or his indifference toward human beings.

I used to pray like a pagan. My prayer was more about telling God what I wanted, rather than listening to God tell me what I needed. I thought prayer was about informing God about what needed to be done in my life and in the world around me. I believed that I needed to work on God if I ever had a chance of getting him to do what I wanted! I felt that I had a better chance of getting what I wanted if I pleaded and begged and cried and starved and deprived myself. I even tried to offer bribes: I would light a 30 day candle instead of one of those cheap two-hour candles, I would say 50 rosaries instead of one. I would do a seven-day novena instead of saying a simple silent prayer, I would promise to make a big contribution to charity if my wish was granted. I would attend an all-night vigil instead of a few quiet moments during the day.  I probably would have pushed a virgin into a volcano, but there was a shortage of virgins in my town! Pagan prayer is all about getting the attention of a cold, distant, cruel and aggravated god and persuading him to alter his behavior through bribery and sadism. That, my friends, is no way for Christians to pray!

Today, we read one of my favorite readings about prayer in our first reading. It is the story of the wise and famous King Solomon’s prayer. We are told that God “appeared to Solomon in a dream one night,” “inviting him to ask for something in prayer.” Solomon points out to God that God had chosen him to be king of a huge nation, even though he was young and inexperienced. In his prayer, Solomon asks God simply for what he needed to do all that God wanted him to do: “an understanding heart” and “the wisdom to know right from wrong.” God was impressed with Solomon’s prayer and answered it, noting that he could have asked for selfish needs: a long life, riches or vengeance on his enemies! 

Solomon teaches us the real meat of all prayer: to do well what God wants us to do! Solomon teaches us the purpose of all prayer: to have us be changed by God, rather than having God be changed by us, as pagans try to do to their gods!  The perfect prayer, as Solomon knew, is to know what God calls us to do and to ask only for the “daily bread” we need to carry it out!

My friends, the difference between the way pagans pray and the way Christians ought to pray is very different. Pagans pray to persuade their gods to change. Christians pray that God will change them. We do not have a moody, disinterested or stingy God who needs to be bribed or woken up or persuaded to give us what we ask. Our God already wants to give us what is good for us. Our God simply wants us to open ourselves to receive the good he already desires for us. The perfect Christian prayer is a prayer of openness and gratitude. A perfect Christian prayer is the prayer of Mary, “Thy will be done!” The perfect Christian prayer is the prayer of Solomon, “Give me what I need to do the job you have given me!”  The perfect Christian prayer is the pray of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemani, “Your will, not mine, be done!”  God does not need to change, be instructed or informed. We do!

For my conclusion today, I turn to “bumper sticker theology.”  We are all familiar with the bumper sticker that says, “prayer changes things.” There is another bumper sticker that, I believe, is more accurate. It says, “prayer changes people and people change things.”     

 

CHURCH CHAT #38