Love Is

Love is.

When I began wondering in my university years if God might be calling me to the priesthood, this Gospel passage revealed something to me.  Up until that point, my one dream in life was to marry and have a family of my own.  So the thought of becoming a priest seemed like something I would at best “try” – if God were really calling me, but I really could not see how I could be happy without a wife and children of “my own.”

But this passage woke me up to the fact that those last two words – “my own” – said a lot about the emphasis of my desire for a family in those days.  It was quite plainly, all about me.  I wanted a family “of my own” – people whose role it was to make me happy.  But then I read the words of this Sunday’s Gospel:

“For if you love those who love you,
what reward do you have?
Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,
what more are you doing than the others?
Do not even the Gentiles do the same?”

Love is always a gift.  Every vocation, genuinely lived, must take us out of our comfort zone, beyond what we think will make us happy, to choose to love, to make a gift of ourselves to others – whether that is in consecrated life, or priesthood, or marriage, or celibate single life in the world.  Without a choice to love, we will never be happy, because we cannot fully find ourselves except through a sincere gift of ourselves.¹