Love Requires Communion

Love does not require two people, and yet, at the same time, it cannot be forced or coerced. It must be a gift to be accepted or denied, received or rejected. Love is not a pure emotion, though emotions and passions can drive it, but a willed act. It cannot be as fickle as the winds or the rain, or exacted like a science or weather phenomena. Love cannot be predicted for the simple fact that it requires a free will ready to return that love which has been first given, and thus to be shared with the Other, with each of the ones surrounding. Love requires Communion.

It is there that Love takes on all its properties and all of its varied and diverse forms. It is here in this moment, when it is shared that the seed of faith grows, that hope is renewed, and that Love takes root.

Any setback, any humiliation, any perceived foible or failure possibly seen by others, any heartbreak, any loss of possession, any separation of affection and touch, or even the sense of abject failure need not go unpurposed, unused, or wasted in the pursuit of this Communion of Love. The Spirit of God gives us fruits of grace especially in these humble moments when the consolations dry up and the earthly happiness ceases. The rains of grace shall come again, and the new day shall dawn once more and break from on high. This temporal winter so too shall pass. And even in these dry moments, there Love is.

"Love and truth will meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth will spring from the earth; justice shall look down from heaven." Psalm 85:11-12

And so it is, Love through Communion and Communion through selfless love. It isn't so much that we go wandering the world in search of Love in all the wrong places; it is that we have forgotten that it wasn't we who first loved but that we must realize that we must first be loved before we can learn to speak adequately in the language demanded by Love and of the One who created us. No single response is exactly the same to the demands of love. And those demands, which may seem high and distant at times or number many, distill into each the basic callings that each person receives as the seed to their very "vocation to love," as St. Therese of Lisieux once said.

"In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:17-19

Her struggle to win herself over to her "Little Way" is as legendary as it is simple: to be all things to all, she must first be love for the other in her own distinct, simple, child-like way. She was not everything, and yet through Love's massive expanse she became, through the Communion of Love and through the Faith and Hope she professed, the Love she desired so much. She did not allow the stumbling block of fear to obscure the "lamp upon [her] feet" and "light of [her] path" (cf. Psalm 119:105).

Love has no other ultimate end besides Communion with God, who is Love. And so, while the impostor examples placate in the interim, anything that does not lead us to that ultimate end of Communion with Him—be it trifle or tempest, longing or largesse, silence or speech, climax or desolation, height or depth—we find ourselves unable to be filled, by which we are unable to be in lasting peace, and in the end through which we are unable to have everlasting life itself without this aim. No matter its tried and noble path, if it not end in love, then it would be all dross. Without this Love, supreme of all virtues, we would be nothing, for without Him we are. And with Him, no matter the past, Love conquerors all not by force but by simple unending Truth in Communion with the Creator Blest. "We love because he first loved us." (1 Jn 4:19)

Where else but first at the Sacrifice of the Cross at Calvary in the bloody form and then at the re-presentation at the Altar under the unbloody form of the Eucharist first instituted by Christ himself as a Sacrament of Love? Where else can Love come down to be poured into all the Faithful to both strengthen them and to show them Love's most sublime way of entering into Communion with His bride, the Church? Love has no end, except in Him. Let us return in love by whom all loves so beautifully excel in bringing one another God, in whom we are strengthened for the blessed race still to be run but that has already been won, and through Him we have everlasting life.

"At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us." (Sacrosanctum Concilium 47)

Love as Vocation

Vocation is an interesting topic. Much is often said about it in Catholic circles, especially for those of "religious" vocations, as though there only some specific religious vocation. Hardly is this the case, but it is quibble of the language to be sure.

Or is it only a failure of the language? Is it only an oddity of the English language as the word is? Is it shackled to conceptions that might be ill-formed or, perhaps, only under-formed? Could it be a lack of blossom in the modern conception of the word of "vocation?" Perhaps.

Vocationally, at least within some very reverent and holy groups of Catholics, the idea of the priesthood as the singular "holy" vocation—that is to say, in a way, religious—has historically been the priesthood or consecrated vocations. However, this might as well be a slighted perspective. Not always has this view been the case, but it has prevailed more often than perhaps is necessary. It belabors the earthly joys that the particular vocations offer up in one way or another. However, all authentic vocations do just this besides, in large or small ways, throughout the history of the Church. As it ought to be in the first case.

Nevertheless, we do hear prayers for the religious vocations to flourish. That those with these internal callings to be supported and rightly so. It is necessary, it is needed, and it is helpful. However, it could be say it is also a hindrance to the larger perspective.

How can we raise society merely from these—pardon the evocative language—"miracle cases?" Where are the ordinary cases of holiness? There lies the basis for each authentic vocation lived out as a testament to the Gospel preached. It is the Gospel preached without words but with actions.

God does work miracles, everyday miracles, and ones of intense conversions. Rightly and beautifully so, He does. However, He also works the smaller miracles, the ordinary miracles as well day in and day out within the Domestic Church. Building the Family into the Holy Family, in parcels or parts, raises the watermark for all subsequent actions. The holiness—the set-apart reality of grace—flows from this consecration of the ordinary, as Blessed John Paul the Great taught with his call for a "universal call to holiness" born out of the Second Vatican Council and one of its Apostolic Constitution, Lumen Gentium, as well as John Paul II's Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte" and his Apostolic Exhortation "Familiaris Consortio."

Certainly each vocation builds upon and supports the others, but it takes an initial spark of the Domestic Church, the "Holy Family," the hidden years of toil and work, to bring foundation for the work of the Vineyard at the summation of each person's vocation.

With regard to one's vocation, the heart should burn for consummation, which is to say: to consume and be consumed and yet remain as ever before, constant and unhindered for eternity, a burning bush that remains unburned as zeal presses on in beauty bright. One's vocation shouldn't be the path of least resistance, to the easy way out. It should be the innermost selfless desire wrapped in the greatest good with one's gift set—nothing more, nothing less. It should bear itself through trial and rejection. It should be peerless in its presence, open to questioning, yet receiving no doubt. In the end, the vocation is Love Itself, so in Love should one wait who is discouraged in the Vocation set, in its timing and its wait that Love so gently begets. Come, O Love Divine. Teach us thy ways to peace. Thy name be blessed.

"The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Love; It signifies Love, it produces Love." - St. Thomas Aquinas

It's been such a blessed time to spend so much of it in reflection at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, which has a re-presentation of the Holy House that Lady Richeldis was instructed by Our Lady to build in model of the Holy House in Nazareth.

There is a great joy to be in the Holy House in Nazareth and contemplate God's inner wisdom, the beauty of Love come down. To be at the prime example of the Domestic Church and thus pray for the whole world.

I was given the view, the quiet peace at the Sunday Mass of the Feast of the Holy Family at Our Lady of Walsingham to see a young family, a young suited man with his wife and their young child who kept smiling through out the High Mass, peering back perhaps at the organist and the choir in the loft. Not a cry or frown came from her. I couldn't help but focus there as the readings went on, as it was the Feast Day of the Holy Family... and I was enthralled with the smile, with the image of them. They were among those who went for a wedding anniversary blessing, which I thought was fitting to the time. The joy and contentment of such an example to reverberate and echo the liveable example of the Holy Family.

It amplified to me such a wonderful reverberation of the following reflection:

"[From the family in Nazareth] we learn silence. If only we could once again appreciate its great value...the silence of Nazareth should teach us how to meditate in peace and quiet, to reflect on the deeply spiritual, and to be open to the voice of God's inner wisdom and the counsel of his true teachers. Nazareth can teach us the value of study and preparation, of meditation, of a well-ordered personal spiritual life, and of silent prayer that is known only to God." Pope Paul VI, 5 January 1964

Let us live these words with joy for the New Year ahead. Deo gratias, Anno Domini 2013!