Falling in Love

[inspired by a talk given by Fr. Steven Voss]

Falling in love.... We do whatever we can to get to know the other person. We arrange our schedules so that we can spend time with him or her. We yearn to be with that person. We may spend nearly every waking moment thinking about that certain someone. So why should it be ANY different with Jesus Christ, our Most Beloved? Look upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus - how His Love actively burns for us! How strong, how bright, how passionate it is! Oh, but how His heart must ache when we turn away from Him and reject His love with our sinfulness. But despite our sins, our shortcomings, and our flaws, He longs for us and loves us more than we could ever fathom. Take the time to fall in love with Him again and again this summer. Get to know him further through the Scriptures, spend time with Him in Eucharistic Adoration, accept His mercy and grace through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, yearn to be with Him at Mass, receive Him in the Blessed Sacrament, think about Him throughout the day through prayer and meditation, and simply offer up your daily trials and tribulations and unite them with His sufferings - as often as you can - because He falls in love with us even more, each and every time. Jesus is waiting for us.

"It is Jesus in fact that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal." - Pope John Paul II, World Youth Day 2000 in Rome