“What makes us human is precisely our experience of the infinite, the fact that we are never satisfied. We are the subjects of unlimited longing, finding infinity not outside ourselves but within. We ask questions about totality and ultimate meaning, and by so doing find that we are asking the question about God. God and humanity are not rivals. One does not love God less by loving someone more; in reaching out to love another person, we are reaching out for God. To speak about love for God and love for human beings is to speak of the same reality. And in the experience of ourselves as mystery, we experience the absolute mystery that is God.”

Ron Modras
Ignatian Humanism

Dean Brackley, the late Jesuit educator who spent many years teaching in El Salvador, wrote a beautiful meditation on what it feels like to fall in love because of the ministry of the poor. The text comes from a piece he wrote in 2000 for Salvanet, “A Publication of Christians for Peace in El Salvador,” published as a PDF file here.

Writing of those who visit El Salvador for the first time, he says:

The visitors feel themselves losing their grip; or better, they feel the world losing its grip on them. What world? The world made up of important people like them and unimportant poor people like their hosts. As the poet Yeats says, “things fall apart;” the visitors’ world is coming unhinged. They feel resistance, naturally, to a current that threatens to sweep them out of control.

They feel a little confused–again–like the disorientation of falling in love. In fact, that is what is happening, a kind of falling in love. The earth trembles. My horizon is opening up. I’m on unfamiliar ground, entering a richer, more real world. We all live a bit on the periphery of the deep drama of life, more so, on average, in affluent societies. The reality of the periphery is thin, one-dimensional, “lite,” compared to the multilayered richness of this new world the visitors are entering. In this interchange with a few of their representatives, the anonymous masses of the world’s poor emerge from their cardboard-cutout reality and take on the three-dimensional status of full-fledged human beings.

That is what love is like: “entering a richer, more real world.” Of course many are like those in Plato’s cave, content with the small pleasures, unwilling to take the risk of love. For love is demanding. It changes your whole world. It is always holy ground, the place where we experience the terror of not being in control. That is why love is the least inadequate way of conceiving of God.

Image by logostoni under Creative Commons license.

My daughter Laura turned me on to the British band Mumford and Sons. They’re something special. “After the Storm” speaks of longing for God, and the hope that love will triumph:

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

The lyrics (most of them, anyway) are part of the video, but you can read them all here.  If you like this song, listen to “Roll Away Your Stone.”

(Click here to watch the video on YouTube.)

The devotion to the Heart of Christ, so vigorous some years ago, so much on the decline today, would flourish once again if people would understand that it consists essentially in accepting Jesus Christ as love incarnate, as the manifestation of the unconditional love of God for us. Anyone who accepts this is bound to experience fruits beyond all his expectations in his own prayer life and in his apostolate. The great turning point in your life comes not when you realize that you love God but when you realize and fully accept the fact that God loves you unconditionally.

Anthony de Mello, SJ

Seems to me the word “mitzvah” is being used a lot these days. Usually it shows up in exclamations: “It’s a mitzvah.”

Maybe I’m noticing this because the recent preponderance of unnaturally natural disasters has highlighted people reaching out to help one another. Or, maybe this is all going on in my mind? I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the case. My mind and all that drifts through it has been irrevocably shaped by being raised Jewish and living on the East coast for ever and ever, world without end.

Mitzvah. It’s a feminine noun that tends to be used by Jews and non-Jews alike to mean “good deed.”  More accurately, the word means “commandment.”  Jewish law is comprised of 613 mitzvot and I like what Chasidic teachers do with this word. They teach that because the root word (tzavta) means “connection,” every mitzvah is a way to connect with God.

“What a mitzvah,” we say when someone is helpful or generous or kind or compassionate. Fine by me. God knows I don’t have the power to change colloquial usage. Still, I’d love it if whenever we proclaim something a mitzvah, we’d remember that loving another like oneself is indeed a commandment, one that deepens our connection to God.

Look what happens to Matthew 22:36-40 when the word mitzvah is properly used:

“Teacher, which is the greatest mitzvah in the Law? Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all you soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest mitzvah. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two mitzvot.”

Somewhere nearby—perhaps a co-worker in the next cubicle; a friend across the room; a stranger in the chair next to you; a spouse beside you in bed; a child clawing at your leg for attention–there, now, is an opportunity for love.  Before you is God’s invitation to know him.  Do not delay; do not postpone love.  Reach for it; give your whole self to it.  Use your imagination, for love is not for the sluggish.  Surprise him with love; overwhelm her with love–and be surprised and overwhelmed.  God is nearby.  Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act (Ps 37:5).

With Valentine’s Day coming up I’m taking the initiative to get folks thinking about love.  Here’s a clip that I sometimes make reference to in my classes, from the 1997 film As Good As It Gets. If you can’t see the video, click here.

Ignatius wrote that “love shows itself more in deeds than in words.” We tend to focus on feelings first. This clip suggests something of Ignatius’s wisdom: feelings don’t sustain a relationship; actions do. More specifically: symbolic actions do. There’s nothing especially loving about taking pills (as Nicholson’s character does) except when that action symbolizes something deeper, something more mysterious than words can communicate.

There’s a moment at the end of the clip when they both look somewhat afraid: that is the only response to real love, for it is an entrance into a place where neither party can really have control, but only let go and behold. It is for that reason that the author of the first letter of John suggests that God is love: for when one loves truly one has already removed his shoes and stands on holy ground.

One of the very best lines I’ve heard about love came from the wise mouths of Zhang Mucheng (101 years old) and Xu Dongying, (102) of Shanghai, celebrating 80 years of marriage together.  When asked about love, they said “We are not used to kissing and hugging…we just feel good when we are together.”  And later: ““We have so many things to do together…we don’t have time for fights.”

Most folks, I think, immediately conjure up the hugging and kissing part when they see the word “love.”  Zhang and Xu remind us that for the long haul, love is much more about the thousands of ways that people shape lives together.  They shape emotional bonds, “feeling good together,” making choices that leave no room for discord.

I wonder if the same image about love might apply to prayer–forging an emotional relationship with God?  Could our devotional practices and our loving work in the world contribute to an unfolding friendship with God?  Could our experiences of reaching out to God in love help build a relationship, such that in times of suffering we turn to God as a friend who nourishes and sustains us?

Or perhaps building a strong loving relationship with a lifelong friend could be part of building a strong loving relationship with God?

It was a moment of grace on a Sunday afternoon.  My husband, Jim, and I were walking through the crowd into a Creighton U basketball game.  In the middle of the throng on the sidewalk ahead of us, we spotted a little girl, about 5 years old, wearing a spectacular fluffy ballet tutu in game day colors, blue and white. Her special skirt bounced with her as she walked proudly along next to her father.  I smiled at the difference in their sizes, her father a huge man, tall and beefy, carefully holding her miniature hand in his.

I saw that in his other hand he carefully held a tiny canvas bag—and out of the top of it peeked a Barbie doll.  I loved the image of this large man carrying his daughter’s doll, unselfconscious in his desire to keep her happy.

As we passed them I complimented her on her skirt.  They both smiled and she thanked me.  “My mom made it for me to wear to the games,” she said proudly twirling in it.  Her father looked down at her with such love then reached his hand down to reconnect with her and I saw it. The fingernails on his massive hand were painted a bright pink.

This was truly a father, a dad in all respects, whose love of his daughter gave him the freedom to not only allow his daughter to paint his nails, but to wear them publicly with pride and happiness or to forget he even had them done.  Father and daughter joined hands again, their nails matching in color and their joy in each other, clear.

I’d like to propose a juxtaposition of two ideas that emerge from the Spiritual Exercises: practice and love.  Without getting into too much insider baseball on how Ignatius’ text emphasizes these themes, let me suggest a brief thought exercise that you might take into prayer.

1. We learn anything by practicing: the piano, soccer, algebra.

2. Jesus calls us to love one another as the Father has loved Jesus.

3. How do you practice love?

Notice that embedded in observation #1 is the basic idea that practice itself isn’t always fun or instantly gratifying.  In fact, it can be tedious.  But what makes us do in the tedious times (what Ignatius might call desolation) is the hope that it will bring forth some fruit in our lives.  To practice love like Jesus–to work at it day after day–what might that mean for you?  What are the many practices which, when added up, help you develop into a virtuoso, a poet of love?