Deuteronomy 6:4

Have you ever had an “Aha” moment? That’s a time when something becomes vividly clear to us; a kind of “epiphany” moment. I’ve had several in my Christian pilgrimage over the years. Sometimes it is brought about by an author I have read, as in this case, or a person I met or an experience I have had. Here’s one of them.

I must confess at the start that I have always stewed over the fact I didn’t really “feel” the love of God. A couple in love with each other can’t wait to be together. They find a lot of opportunity for sharing vast amounts of information about each other with total fascination; material nobody else on earth could possibly be interested in. They engage in endless “twitter”. They gaze helplessly into each other’s eyes. That is the love one feels when in love.

But with God, it is clearly different. Maybe some of the saints felt that kind of love. They may have been head over heels. Poor Teresa of Avila would get so overcome with God’s presence, she would go into ecstasy. But not so with me and not so for most of us, I suspect. I never get white knuckled with anticipation while waiting to attend Sunday mass. I never find myself getting warm all over at the thought I am about to read a chapter from Leviticus. So it has been all my life. I used to feel very guilty about it. Did I love members of my family more than God? What was wrong with me? I wondered and I fretted.

Then one day it hit me. Jesus said on one occasion, “Hear O Israel, The Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Wait a minute. How can you command someone to love somebody else? I suppose you can get your son to send a thank you note to his aunt for a gift she sent him on his birthday. You tell him. You order him. You command him. But all the commanding in the world cannot make your son love his aunt, if in fact he does not. We don’t just grit our teeth and say we are going to love someone that we are not attracted to.

And here is the “Aha” moment with respect to Almighty God. The commanded love we are to have for Him, our neighbor and our self must be of a different kind if it can be commanded and ordered of us. Emotions simply cannot be ordered but our will can. That is the point that came “crashingly clear” and brought me relief from my guilt. I do not have to feel love for God; my neighbor or myself for that matter. But willfully I must do so. God set it up this way because our fundamental relationship with Him must be built on something dependable, something steady; not subject to the inevitable ups and downs of our ephemeral feelings. Will…not emotion. Possibly God doesn’t care at all what we feel but only cares about what we do. Did Jesus feel like dying on the cross? There is evidence to the contrary in Scripture. But He believed what He had to do. See the implications? If I don’t feel like going to mass or saying my prayers, that is ok. What matters always is what I do. “Don’t speak of love, show me” crooned a songstress of long ago.

Jesus once said, “Blessed are those who believe but have never seen”. So, can we not also say, “Blessed are those who love but have never felt”?

God loves you.
Fr. Mike Cassell+

* * * Do not miss tomorrow’s blog on Suffering * * *

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