Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy.
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time – It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love…
It is the Beatles’ song—All You Need is Love. It could be a theme song for the feast of today—St. Theresa of the Child Jesus. What St. Theresa treasured most in her life was the love. She talks: “I saw and realized that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting. Then, nearly ecstatic with the supreme joy in my soul, I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found my calling: my call is love. Certainly I have found my proper place in the church, and you gave me that very place, my God. In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be love, and thus I will be all things, as my desire finds its direction.”
However, we need to be careful not to be confused with the love St. Theresa had and the love people feel and talk in daily. It is not all about romantic feeling or physical intimacy between lovers. There is some overlap and similarity and yet it is a part of what love is. The love St. Theresa talks is similar to Fr. Pedro Arrupe’s words.
“Nothing is more practical than finding God, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you will do with your evening, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”
The love that decides everything comes from God. St. Paul is convinced to say, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather (a spirit) of power, of love and of self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God” (2 Tim. 1:7-8).
You have launched a journey through this college life. God your strength will guide you to fall in the love that will decide everything. Let’s walk with a spirit of power, of love and of self-control.