My guilty pleasure is watching television online. We do not have cable in the house… we barely have working local stations. Yet, after a long day of phone calls and being present to others, all I want to do is catch up with my friends on Private Practice. I think I watch them because I am grateful that my life isn’t as extreme as theirs are!
 

But the last episode was a tough one. Each character had a plan… a plan for how she wanted to give birth, a plan to always choose life for her family, especially her 15 year old daughter, a plan for him and his wife, a plan for her practice and her clients… everyone had a plan. But their plans didn’t work… her stubbornness led to three days of labor, her daughter was pregnant and she insisted on an abortion, his wife died, and the therapist needed therapy.
 

In the end, this close-knit of friends and colleagues takes a breath overlooking the setting sun and surrendered their ideas, hopes, and plans to this idea and challenge of love. “All we’ve got to do is stay in love,” one of the characters said.

Our reality is no different. Rebuilding an entire city attracts drama, competition, and worst of all, a change of plans. Our lives are filled with dreams, and sometimes things don’t work out the way we plan for them…
 

But we are all called to stay in love through the thickness and richness of our everyday. Today’s Good News comes from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 13:4-8a:

Love is patient, love is kind.
It is not jealous, it is not pompous,
It is not inflated, it is not rude,
it does not seek its own interests,
it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing
but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.
 

If we are to stay in love, we’ve got to take a moment to understand what love is. Then, we’ve got to practice love with our families, with our friends, with our neighbors, with the people we have yet to know.

 

In addition to this inspiration, I thought of a famous quote by a famous Jesuit:

 

"Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, 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 evenings, how you will spend your weekends, what you read, who 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."

Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ

 

Once we understand love and live in it we become one in God… we become love in this broken world.