Publication Team Elias Hage
Editor-in-Chief •
Anthony Halstead Copy Editor •
Monica Recto Layout Editor •
Courtney Shingle Executive Assitant •
Jacob Baugher and Emma Lipnicki Cover Artist
Featuring Kathryn Carnell Cover Model
Table of Contents
Letter from the Editor -4-
Highlighting Our Neglect of Self-Love -5-
On Love and Atheism -8-
Did Jesus Really Love Peter? - 11 -
How Far is Too Far? - 14 -
On Love and the Liturgy - 16 -
The Gadfly is a publication of “The Gadfly�, a student club approved to operate at Franciscan University of Steubenville. The opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily express the views of Franciscan University or its administration.
Pull at my heart Pull at my heart and tug at my tears, The danger of love is losing in fear. The Powerful voice to which I once clung Has slipped through the cracks like dust in the rug.
She rocked me like mamma, She held me like daddy. Both parts she played, both songs she sang. Forever she’ll have my heart. Words reach the surface, Action reaches the heart. “I’ll love you forever” no matter your endeavor And to her heart she held. Love him she did; Love him she does; Love him she always will. No limits to love that comes from above;
-Elizabeth Collins
April letter from the editor. This is the last issue of the semester and my last issue as editor-in-chief. I can honestly say that I have learned so much from my time on staff and from the many mistakes I have made over the span of this last year. I have learned that most efforts will go unnoticed; I have learned that a great team is not just a necessity, but a blessing; I have learned that sometimes people just need something to be angry at; I have learned the importance of admitting my mistakes; but most of all, I have learned that – clichés aside – if I am not acting out of love then my actions are either harming myself or, and more importantly, someone else. When I was young(er) I used to wish two things didn’t exist: sleep and love (we’ve all been 10 and bursting with energy so I’ll leave the explanation for sleep aside). After the death of my Grandfather – I was 12 at the time – I thought that love was the cause of the worst kind of pain. “If I didn’t love him so much I wouldn’t be hurting so much now that he’s gone!” It was love’s fault that my friend came into school crying after his parents got that divorce – why does he have to care so much! I held such a disdain for the pain that I saw and felt from separation, from a break in the relationship between the lover and the beloved. I couldn’t understand why anyone would go outside loving blood relatives and put himself on the stand for unnecessary hurt. Years later I experienced such a love followed by an “unnecessary hurt.” Everything clicked. When you love someone so much you are willing to experience any hurt for the sake of the other person. Love gives everything meaning, even pain. Pain which stems from love becomes sacrifice. Love is what made my hurt holy.
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Elias Hage 4
Highlighting Our Neglect of Self-Love Kathleen Monin Mature followers of Christianity have surpassed simplistic, Disney-esque notions of what love is. We know that love is not a feeling. We know it’s not merely meeting a friend or partner’s expectations, nor endless attention, nor devotion of resources (though at times it may involve similar things). To love someone is to desire the highest good for them, and to strive to attain that good. Love is not a passive verb, where you cuddle your beloved and hope that things work out for them. It is an action verb that requires staying up all night to listen to someone cry, lending money when you need it yourself, and maybe even breaking up with someone, if that truly is what’s best. I propose that this active love is essential to live life as a faithful Christian, especially when love that is between oneself and… oneself. Self-love is the cornerstone of all Christian virtue, as without an awareness of our own value, we have no reason to experiences, however, have lead me to believe that as Christians, we are so afraid of sin, we press ourselves and our peers to never, ever do anything wrong. We go so far to stop sin that we even threaten to withdraw our love from the sinner—which is highly detrimental, especially if that sinner is oneself. But this is not an article about guilt. This is an article about virtue. I propose that in order to be virtuous, it is not enough to avoid evil, but one must do good. A simple example of virtue would be a man offering his coat to a freezing young woman. If he were merely to neglect passing judgment on her for forgetting to dress warmly, he has not sinned, but has missed an opportunity to grow in virtue. As Chesterton said: “Mercy does not mean not being cruel, or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen
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or not seen.” I believe that action is that “plain and positive thing” Chesterton speaks of, and that action should be motivated by self-love. The previous example is easy to understand, as virtue through loving others is easy to exemplify. In this modern age, however, fear of sin has driven many Christians to neglect or misunderstand the self-love that virtue requires. To recount a personal example, I often hear girls explaining modesty as “helping a brother out,” making sure that a man isn’t tempted by a woman’s body. This line of reasoning makes sense. You are making sure he avoids evil, and making sure you avoid evil. But, by accepting the mere absence of temptation as the definition of modesty, we miss an opportunity to practice the virtue. The nature of the virtue of modesty is recognition of the dignity of our own bodies. We must consider ourselves and our dignity of primary importance in order to cultivate the virtue of modesty. If the virtue of modesty simply consists of avoiding tempting other people, how do we grow? As inherently valuable children of God, we deserve love from everyone, ourselves included. When dealing with a virtue, it is not prideful or selfish to ask, “What’s in it for me? How can I improve myself as a person?” Thus I propose that you should not consider modesty as a service to other people, but a service to yourself. The solution to the question of modesty is easy: Dress in a way that is respectful of yourself. This simple rule eliminates the question of specifics. “Can I wear a bikini?” and “Do I have to wear straps?” become irrelevant. If I go running in a sports bra because it’s hot outside, I am not disrespecting myself. I am, in fact, treating myself respectfully, by avoiding heat stroke. In his book Love and Responsibility, Pope (soon to be Saint) John Paul II described a similar situation: “When a person uses...a form of dress in accordance with its objective function we cannot claim to see anything immodest in it, even if it involves partial nudity.” If I am objectified by a man while I am treating myself respectfully,
I would argue that he is at fault. Perhaps it would be charitable, not modest, of me to consider this man’s concupiscence, and help him avoid temptation, but that is another matter. One should never mistake self-love for the sin of pride. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says that “the man is thought to be proud who thinks himself worthy of great things, being worthy of them; for he who does so beyond his deserts is a fool, but no virtuous man is foolish or silly.” In this passage, Aristotle distinguishes the vice of pride from proper self-love, by showing that pride is the vice of a fool who thinks himself worthy of things he does not deserve. In this passage, Aristotle alludes to the spectrum on which
morality is not what Catholicism truly teaches. Christ came to save man because there is an element of man which is inherently good, not because man had the potential to avoid evil. Our redemption through Christ ought to inspire us to pursue the highest goods, and to neglect the lower and lowest ones. Too often, however, a lack of self-love leads us to encourage each other to pursue lesser, easier goals than the perfection to which we are called. For example, we are told that we should abstain from sex and other arousing activities before marriage because “How would your future spouse feel if he/she knew you did that?” Honestly, if he’s really meant to be my future spouse, he should have a great enough love of the goodness in me to forgive my weaknesses and mistakes. As well-intentioned as the reminder of my future spouse’s feelings may be, such reminders cannot be the cornerstone of my chastity. Avoiding future marital stress is a lesser good than preserving my integrity and value, which self-love naturally provides. If we place too much stress on a hypothetical spouse’s feelings, we neglect to recall the importance of ourselves. Isn’t it more important that I make decisions based on the well-being of my soul than on the potential feelings of my husband? As Christians, we should redirect the energy that we aim at sin into self-love. I am an invaluable subject, and because of this my self-love should guide me to use my sexual capacities for the purposes they are intended—not because a potential partner might experience jealousy. Flawed though we are, we must recognize the love which we deserve and the beauty to which we are called. This recognition is the soul of self-love, and the foundation on which we can rise to the challenge of virtue and grace. This burden is great and this journey is long. As I’m sure any saint would tell you, there is
excess of self-love, while sins such as immodesty, fornication, and gluttony, which involve some abuse or misuse of a person’s own body, clearly spring from provides the personal sense of integrity and value with which to combat these sins.
“If the virtue of modesty simply consists of avoiding tempting other people, how do we grow?” If we continue to disregard the self-love that is the cornerstone of virtue, we will see ourselves merely as individuals whom other people have an obligation to value. Thus, we encounter a paradox where we are constantly guilted into taking care of ourselves only for the sake of someone else. In his book, On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche regards the common Christian morality as reactive, and based on negative reinforcement. Christian morality, he believes, is often believed to merely be a list of many things we must not do and must stay away from, and is only concerned with the attention and opinions of others. I believe that this common perception of Christian
life is easily lived.
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I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. -Mother Teresa
On Love and Atheism James Germain date? That is, the greatest sin is not something we do, it is not murder or rape or abortion or homosexual conduct. The greatest sin is to not love. In any other sin we simply violate our purpose in being. In refusing to love we utterly fail at it. At the heart of all sin is this, a failure to love. If I truly loved my fellow drivers I would never be rude to them or impatient with them. Would you ever view pornography if you truly loved the people in those pictures? This is what it means to live for love; that I consider other people before myself, that I place their good before my own, that their happiness is the source of my joy. When we are children, heaven is often presented as a type of reward for a life well lived. We come to think that if we are good and virtuous then God will reward us with eternal life in paradise. When we enter more fully into the mystery of life we come to real-
As Catholics we hold that love is the highest good for which we were made and for which we live.
true happiness and satisfaction. My controversial claim is that you do not have to be Catholic, or even believe in God, in order to hold this view. I would like to put forth that a purely philosophical argument Atheist can be convinced that it is for the sake of love that we ought to devote our lives. As Christians we can hold to this view simply on the basis of Scripture which tells us in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” And concluding in verse 13, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” We might also consider Matthew 22, when Jesus is asked, “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?” and Jesus responds, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
joy that we are seeking, not as an arbitrary reward, but as the natural ends of the act. As Catholics we hold that God is love and as we devote ourselves more fully to love we enter more fully into relationship with Him. Thus, our love determines the state of our eternity. If there is a heaven, and our life there is dependent upon how well we loved here, then clearly we should make every effort to grow in this virtue. Living for myself may have momentary pleasures but carries eternal consequences. If there is a heaven, live for love. What if there is no heaven and this world is all that counts? Consider that no matter how great you may become, how famous, how rich, how powerful, someday you will die and in time so too will everyone who remembers you. Someday the very universe will grow cold and there will be no one left to remember
commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your hang on these two commandments.” The two greatest commandments are to love. If the greatest commandment is to love, does it not follow that the greatest sin is to violate this man-
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present you with a dichotomy, or rather, two dichotomies. The question at hand is this, to live for myself or my neighbor. It does not matter, for our purposes here, if there is a heaven and a hell. It only matters whether or not you believe in them. If you do, then consider this; every action, every inaction and every thought, trains us to focus either on others or on ourselves. Every time you choose yourself over another you are training yourself for hell. Every time you choose another over yourself you are training yourself for heaven. Every action, inaction and thought,
anything. If this world is all there is then the future and the memories we leave behind are pointless. They What of the past? It is already over. It can only matter in so far as it impacts the present. One can strive to live for the past, but what does this accomplish? The past is past and irretrievable. We cannot change or alter it in any way. All we accomplish by
offer us knowledge and guidance, but not purpose or meaning. To live for the future is pointless. To live for the past is simply foolish. All we have then is the present, the now, this very moment. Does it then follow that I should seek from this moment what joy I may, what pleasure and
Even if you do not believe in heaven, I still meaning in life or the meaning of life is to love. If there is no meaning in life, recognizing that there is at least momentary pleasure in serving others, then you might as well try loving. After all, you have nothing to lose. If there is meaning to be had, then we should pursue it. What else matters? Imagine if your life could have had meaning and you chose to
learned with time, but no matter how much pleasure, power or fame one may gain, it will never satisfy them. No one has ever found meaning through living for themselves and their own happiness. The only thing I am left with is love of another.
You know, what makes hell into hell is not
“What if there is no heaven and this world is all that counts?�
by the total and utter despair of the people within, the existence. Even if you do not believe in a supernatural hell, believe in this one, for you do not need to die to experience it. If there is a life after death and how we live now determines the state of our life then, then we should live for love. If there is no life beyond this realm and this life is all we have then live for love, for love is all there is. Truly, the most important person in the world is the person I could be loving right now.
Now, you could point out that I never established that there is purpose to life, maybe existence is actually meaningless. If you are raising this point as a counter to my opening claim then you should pat yourself on that back, because you win. I cannot refute you and must acknowledge the possibility that there is no true joy to be had in this life and momentary pleasures are all we have. I can, however,
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If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were. -Khalil Gibran
Did Jesus Really Love Peter? Courtney Shingle Whenever someone criticizes us, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that they don’t care. It makes us feel like they aren’t on our side anymore. It’s easy to fall into the “If you really loved me, you would accept me for who I am” trap. But this line of reasoning
Of course, we know that Jesus can never contradict Himself, and since he is the very essence of Love, both examples must be motivated by love. and tolerance. To love means literally “a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person.” Tolerance is “willingness to accept feelings, habits, or beliefs that are different from your own,” which seems nice enough in theory. That’s as far as language can take us, which makes it easy to misuse our language and include tolerance as a key component of love. But if we look to the implication of each, we can see a vast difference between the two ideas. Tolerance is passive at best and indifferent at worst; it says about the other’s actions, “I don’t care what you do, so long as it doesn’t interfere with my life.” It declares its inability to care about the other,
our view of love that we would so quickly subscribe to the idea that love is the same as acceptance or tolerance. It shows how little we understand love. Ask me to show you an example of this; I’ll direct your attention to the social war that is the marriage debate and LGBTQ activism. We constantly hear that we are supposed to accept individuals for who they are and allow them to express themselves any way they choose – because that’s what it means fend marriage and the family is branded “hateful” and “intolerant.” But popular opinion fails to recognize an unpopular truth: true love does not tolerate. Here at Franciscan, I think we can all agree that the epitome of Love was Jesus Christ. If we are to believe that love and tolerance are the same, certainly His example will reinforce this, right? But it doesn’t. While Jesus and His Disciples are in Caesarea
well being of the other, and so it doesn’t bother to address the problems that the other may need to face. tient. It proclaims, “I care about your actions because you matter to me.” It is involved in the other’s life so much that it would risk great personal discomfort for the other’s well being. To tolerate is to feign concern; to love is to show it. Being intolerant does not, however, mean that
the Son of God, and Jesus responds saying, “Blessed revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
is kind and does not dishonor others, but rather protects. What would you rather hear your beloved say: “I tolerate you” or “I love you?” It is much like the parent of a small child. When I was three years old, my parents said time and time again that I was not allowed to put my hands on the top of the stove - which I could just barely reach. One fateful day I ignored their instructions and did what I was forbidden to do,
rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:17-18). But a short time later when Jesus is telling His Disciples rebukes Jesus and Jesus responds, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men” (Matthew 16:23). Can Jesus be acting out of love in the
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and live righteously. The epitome of the relationship that Jesus had
burning my right hand in the process. I cried and my tears. But by no means did she allow me to believe that what I had done was right. She made it very clear that I had caused myself harm by not listening to her, and she was angry because she cared about my safety. Does tolerance seem suitable in this instance? The interaction between the adulterous woman
rather die than do so, when the time comes he denies Him. One can only imagine the burden of guilt and shame he must have felt. Upon Jesus’ resurrection and
woman caught in the act of adultery to Jesus, hoping to force him to choose between compassion and righteousness. They inform Jesus of her crime, with great pride reminding the crowd that the punishment for adultery is death by stoning, and ask him what should be done. Jesus asks that any man without sin
and the Lord responds, “Feed My sheep.” This act of shows him that Christ continued to love him though he had done wrong, and reminds him to act rightly in the future. In the book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis is talking about why Christians attempt to do good when he makes the following statement: “[The Christian] does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.” Love is not contingent upon who I am or what I’ve done; but it doesn’t allow me to go on believing that -
– but instructs her to “Go and sin no more.” He spares her, but He doesn’t declare her actions acceptable; He commands her to be better than she has been and to leave her sinful life behind. Would tolerance here be more compassionate?
“Love is active and alert; it is
him abundantly like He loves each and every one of us. He loves us even though we are stained with sin. He was willing to give His very life to remove that stain and set us free. But He was never willing to leave us that way. True love acts in the best interest of the other – not to maintain the status quo, not to keep from upsetting someone, but to care for that person more than anything and protect that person, even if it’s protecting them from himself. Love as Christ loved, not as the world loves, and then you will see a real change in people.
As Christians we are called to love one another. Sometimes that means there is disappointment and disapproval. Sometimes it means that another person’s actions or beliefs are wrong, but we are still willing to embrace those who fall because we know that we have all fallen. We just love them too much to let them stay fallen. We make every effort to help them stand up tall
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Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
-Albert Einstein
How Far is Too Far? Jacob Popcak Love is messy. Love is complicated. Love – and I don’t just mean Eros (romantic love) here, but view which wishes to see things clear-cut, black and white, safe. of Catholic who attends Franciscan University. Many of us come from tough backgrounds. Despite the mean stereotypes, the so-called “Frannie” isn’t sheltered. We’ve seen the world and we don’t like it. Our pasts are peppered with broken hearts and abuses, sexual
But now we’ve found Christ. We’ve made it here to Franciscan where it’s relatively safe and we who bullied us, far behind us are the boyfriends or girlfriends who made us feel ashamed, and out-ofsight are the parents who – despite their best efforts – never quite gave us what we were searching for. versity isn’t a bubble (no matter what anyone says). It’s a nest. Here in this nest, we can retreat from the chaos and cruelty, danger and depravity of the secular world below us. And with our wounded pasts still fresh our just what we need to feel safe and secure: rules. The rules aren’t too oppressive of course (here’s looking at you, Christendom College), but they’re just strict and present enough to give us an often-much-needed sense of security. There are rules for everything in this nest: rules for living quarters, rules for sleeping, rules for how to pray; and for a while, that’s enough. But then, one day, something terrifying comes along. Something big and scary and messy and gritty which threatens the balance of the protective, rulebound nest we value so deeply. And try as we might to
stop it, it comes for all of us in the end. I’m speaking, of course, about love. It’s easy to gloss over love when one isn’t experiencing it, when one isn’t facing it headlong. But in all truth, love is a terrifying prospect. The Church describes love as an act of self-gift (“Man, who is the only creature on earth which God sincere gift of himself” GS #24) which is “the opposite of escape.” For those of us who treasure the safety of the nest, these facts are precisely what make love scary. Before love, we could turn inward and live by the safety of rule. In love, however, we feel the call to turn outside of ourselves, towards and for the good of another, and the prospect of being lead into this nerve-wracking. In Eros (romantic love), the situation’s even scarier. Now not only do we have to deal with the troublesome Divine call to step outside of ourselves, sacramental desire to consummate our love via the nuptial act (that’s sex, for those of you who are wondering). Some choose to avoid this chaos all together. If you’re the man who’s decided that girls are just not worth the trouble, or the girl who’s decided that passivity is her only option while all her friends go off with their boyfriends, my heart goes out to you. But for many more of us, love is somewhat ourselves entering into relationships. We go on night walks, watch movies in groups of friends, and do all the other things that twitterpated Frannies love to do together. And yet, try as we might, the fear that we experienced at the prospect of love does not go away. While we enjoy our time with that person, we often walk away feeling confused or ashamed. We’re not
someone asks it, they’re not really asking, “How far is too far?” What they’re really asking is, “How close can my partner and I get to sin without sinning?” To even ask the question is to fundamentally take the wrong approach. Now don’t get me wrong: certainly, there are several behaviors which – though not wrong – are intrinsically nuptial (sex is one, of course, but also some of those things which one might consider “foreplay”), and should therefore only be performed in the proper context (marriage). However, outside of those acts, there’s no objective, across-the-board, same-for-everyone, “too far” line. Instead, there remains the Divine call to step outside oneself for the love and good of another person. If one heeds this call, one is not faced with the question of “how far is too far?” but rather, “What can I do to
We’re afraid of what we might do. We’re afraid of the mistakes we might make. We’re afraid what we might do to our beloved. We’re afraid of what our beloved might do to us. And just like that, our focus has turned inward once again. No longer can we turn our attention outward towards our beloved in love. Now we retreat inward, scared of what might happen. And as the relationlike the world of our wounded pasts, we start longing for the safety of that nest. And so we incorporate into our relationships rived in the nest: rules. rules for when we can be together, rules for how we can be together, and – worst of all – rules for how far is ‘too-far’. For the past several years, I’ve worked as Theology of the Body-based speaker and writer. I’ve studied at the Theology of the Body Institute under Christopher West and I’ve been blessed and privileged to do a number of talks on the themes of Theology of the Body, some through Franciscan and some not. But no matter where I go and no matter who I’m speaking to – whether he be a young teen or an angry blogger – I can’t seem to get away from this question of “How far is too far?” No matter how many times I’m asked this question, it always breaks my heart. Because, no matter who asks it, it’s almost always being asked because he or she is longing for the safety and security of the rule-bound nest. This may not be the nest of Franciscan University (though it often is), but it’s always a nest of rules. It’s a nest which sees love (if only implicitly) as a dangerous thing, and therefore seeks to temper it with rules and order. “Ah-hah!” says the “how-far-is-too-far” person. “At last, I have discovered the solution to the scariness of love! I shall come up with rules for my partner and I to follow, and then mistakes are impossible”. But here’s the problem with that outlook: when
Suddenly, a question that’s as intrinsically is too far?” becomes an ongoing conversation, a series of questions like, “What’s going to make my beloved feel loved and adored?”, “What can I do to communicate my beloved’s worth?”, and, “How can I make it so that my beloved walks away from this particular time When a couple asks, “How far is too far?” they’re hyper-focusing on the potential sin. It’s a cynical view to take, and one which essentially asks, “What can I get out of my partner and how many desires can I satisfy before I have to go to confession?” But imagine a relationship in which you and your beloved, rather than setting an objective, all-ornothing rule of what is and what is not “too far” have an ongoing, prayerful, and almost daily conversation in which both of you come before God and evaluate maturely what will best make you both feel most loved. This is the truly Catholic approach. By followselves, we simultaneously must embrace the messiness, organic-ness, and potential for failure that comes with love. Is it scary? Of course. But it’s love.
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Love and the Liturgy Tyson Murphy Through the words of institution (“This is my much the Lord loves us. St. Augustine speaks of this in relation to the great commandment to love one another as the Lord has loved us. He speaks of this being a demonstration of the degree to which the Lord loves us and that if the Lord loves us so entirely then we too must love others in the same fashion. Indeed, if we truly acknowledge the dignity of the human person and its profound tie to the Incarnation, then we will see the Lord in all persons and treat them with a similar love with which we treat the Blessed Sacrament. The poor are especially privileged to this because of their status in the eyes of God and the opportunity they present to us to be expressions of God’s love and mercy for mankind. This we can only experience and express properly with a devotion to the Eucharist. The Eucharist, being Jesus Christ, who is God and God is love. Love the sinner, hate the sin. Love and do as you will. Love God with all your mind, heart, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself. Love others as I have loved you. From Deuteronomy to the Gospels, the Epistles to St. Augustine, our faith is clear, we need to love as we have been loved. How have we been loved? What compels us to love? Why is it that the human beings who have loved more than any other, like St. Francis and Mother Teresa have all been Catholic? The simple answer is the Eucharist and what it does for us. The Eucharist shows us that we are loved, what that means, and allows us to participate in the very nature of Love Himself. The Mass is the classroom in which Truth Himself teaches us what it is to be loved by the profound testimony of Love Himself proclaiming that we are His beloved by His total and but as bread. He does this so that He might give
inviting us to participate in the deepest recesses and self-givings of Trinitarian love. As the Son totally dience to the Father out of love for us and the Holy Spirit pours out from His pierced side so that we may enter into the most intimate moment of self-giving, the Trinity. He does this so that He might live in us and we might live in Him through partaking in the Divine Nature that is love. The total self-giving of the Father to the Son and His return to the Father and Their Love who is the Holy Spirit is what we partake of at every Mass. Not only do we partake of this nature but we are invited into the mystery! We are able to participate at table! We are allowed to be sons in the Son and have a Father, to be members of the family in the most intimate way! This is what I see every time I see the classic Icon of the Visitors to others eyes and an empty spot at the table for you, the viewer. They are waiting for us to surrender more and more and participate more and more so that we might be more and more involved in their life, which is a life of love. The same Divine nature that resides mation is renewed and increased at the Eucharistic table, the wedding feast of our souls to their bridegroom. He professes to us that we are the mystery that Truth seeks and the beloved of Love Himself, that we are the children of the Father, and that we share in the Holy Spirit that sustains all creation. This total and complete giving of Himself to what it means to be loved; it is total and complete self Gospel, and this reality is made manifest to us at
the Mass. We are commanded by the lover of our souls to love others as He has loved us. To obey this commandment we must follow another by following Him by living the cross. The Christian’s way of life is the horizontal and vertical beams of the cross. Our life should not merely be one of a vertical relationship with God, it must include a horizontal relationship with our fellow man. Indeed if we are “actively and consciously participating in the Mass” and are not loving our neighbor then we are not really participating at the Mass. If we are loving our neighbor without actively participating at the Mass then we are not truly loving our neighbor. If we are feeding the hungry and not offering them the bread of life, then we are not feeding the hungry. If we are giving drink to the thirsty and not offering them the endless fountain of living water, then we are not giving drink to the thirsty. If we are giving shelter to the homeless and we are not offering them the refuge of the Lord, then we are not giving shelter to the homeless. If we have a very strong relationship with the Trinity and do not share this love with others or if we are extremely charitable with others and do not have a strong and solid relationship with the Trinity, then we are living a lie.
“The Christian’s way of life is the horizontal and vertical beams of the cross.” The Mass is the “and” between Love God and Neighbor. Christian love and life must be the cross. There must be the vertical dimension of adoration, devotion, and care for the Lord and a horizontal dimension of a deep spirit of charitable service to His people, the poor and the marginalized. It is how He loved us and we are commanded to love others in the same fashion. Without a devotion to the Eucharist and the
other sacraments we cannot love as we should because we cannot know how to love. Through the sacraments we partake in the Divine Nature and the Holy Spirit lives within us through our response to the profession of love displayed to us at the Mass. If we are properly disposed to the grace, it will compel us to move tomore deeply conformed to the Trinity by Him living within us and us living within HIm. Our response to His love for us will mimic His love and will lead us to to our vocation and our state in life. The greatest moment of love that has ever Jesus Christ on the cross so that we might know we are loved, have life, live it abundantly, and be children of God. We have the opportunity to witness and participate in that moment at every Mass. Through the example of love that we see at Mass we are taught how to love others. Through love living inside of us we are compelled to love others by taking up our cross daily and living as Life Himself lives. We do this so that we might live inside love. Let us live the truth that we are the children of God by living our lives following His example set before us by the Mass. Let us strive to live the Mass at every moment and with every person that His all consuming love. Eucharistic Lord who are all good, all loving, grace to know and to see more clearly every moment which your Sacred Heart burns. Virgin most pure, put in us the desire to respond to this love as your did, fully and completely every moment of your existence. surround your Immaculate heart for love of God and neighbor so that we may more properly live the Mass in our daily lives.
Look Up When all you want is nothing more than a peaceful breath, when all you need is something more than that tearful sweat. With a simple smile, life is all yours to change. in a simple way you can make a name. As the leaves change and summer turns to fall, will the reality of life slowly seep through the wall. Your heart feels the longing, your soul hears the crying; of the pure angelic voice you keep denying. You know He is Love, yet sometimes you doubt; leaving yourself to wonder what Love is about. When all you want is nothing more than a peaceful breath, when all you need is something more than a fearful fret. With a simple smile, Love is yours to change. in a simple way you can learn a name. As the leaves die and the winter takes the fall, will the reality of love slowly seep through your wall. Your heart feels to rejoice, your soul hears the voice; of the one He meant for you for even before the choice. You know He is Love and that he Loves you, yet sometimes you wonder why you never saw truth. When all you want is nothing more than a peaceful breath, when all you need is something more than your next step. With a simple smile, Love is yours at last. in a simple way you both can grow so fast. As the leaves begin to bud, and the winter melts into spring, the pureness of this newfound Love presses you to sing. Your heart feels the totality of complete, your soul hears the beat; of the prayer He will speak. You know He is Love, and you no longer doubt; there is always more to what Love is about. When all you want is nothing more than a peaceful breath, when all you need is something more than clarifying depth. Don’t be afraid to just look up.
-Elizabeth Collins