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Once there was a bishop addressing a meeting of priests, The bishop began by saying, “Your bishop has fallen in love I have fallen in love with a woman. I cannot sleep because I think of her. I cannot sleep because I have fallen head over heels for her. Her name is Mary.” There was one deaf priest who managed to catch on to the bishop saying he was falling in love. When he went back to his parish, he told his parishioners, “Please pray for our bishop. He is madly in love with a woman. He cannot sleep, thinking about her, but I forgot her name.”
Falling in love causes a lot of speculation. But the concept of falling in love carries with it the connotation that we practically lose control of our senses. We lose control of our faculties because we have fallen in love. And once we have fallen in love, the situation is that you are no longer “falling,” but are now “in” love.
The Lord Jesus tells us what love really is. Love does not mean falling into something, as though you lose control over your will and human faculties. To love, according to the Lord, is not a question of affection, emotions or feelings. To love, according to the Lord, is not simply a question of fire that is ablaze or fire that will burn out later on. The Lord says the proper way to love is not to fall in love, but to “live on in My love.”
While falling in love refers to emotions beyond control, living in love refers to sustained commitment to our beloved. We love the Lord, there is no question about that. Yet we must purify our love so that we are not only victims of our emotions and our feelings. Our love must be translated into an act of will. That is, even if I don’t feel like it, even if my Feelings are not into it, I will carry on. That is the way olive on in God’s love.
Let us ask the Lord for the grace to sustain us in our love for each other and in our love for the Lord. Not only through feelings, emotions and affection, or by a fire that will burn, and burn out later on, but with a love that lives on, a love that comes from the will.
Silently now, let us lift up to the Lord our prayer for unity, and our readiness and willingness to respect each other’s uniqueness.
I AM IN LOVE
Jn 15:17
Jesus In My Heart
