Love Never Fails

Let's begin session eight with a few quotes from some of the saints to make a key point about this kind of personal prayer.

Obviously, if you're praying, let's say, the Rosary with a group of people, or you're at Mass, or you're praying the Liturgy of the Hours, there's a set trajectory for your prayer. And obviously, you stay in step with the others as you go through the Mass or the Rosary or the Liturgy of the Hours, or similar kinds of prayer.

But in personal prayer like this, where it's the individual with the Lord and there's freedom to let our hearts go where they feel drawn, where God is drawing them in the prayer, then the situation is different.

I want to read a quotation from Saint Francis de Sales and his Introduction to the Devout Life.

You know that Saint Francis was formed on these spiritual exercises, and so you'll see a deep harmony between his writing and what we're talking about in the Spiritual Exercises.

So let's give a case. Let's say you're praying with the eight Beatitudes and you have half an hour to pray. And the first Beatitude really speaks to your heart and really opens up. And you love what's happening, but something in you says, this is beautiful, but I'm not going to get through the text if I just stay right here.

What should I do in this kind of condition? Should I keep it moving so that I get through the entirety of the text, or can I let my heart just rest where it feels drawn? I think the answer is already obvious from the phrasing of the question, but let's watch how the saints address this.

So Saint Francis says, if your mind finds enough appeal, light, and fruit in any of them—that is, particular verses or points in the prayer, let's say the first Beatitude, to go back to that example—remain with that point and do not go further. So if God is giving grace in the first Beatitude or the third Beatitude, let your heart stay there as long as God is giving grace.

Look, if you're looking to meet a friend who is in one of five houses up the road and you knock on the door of the first house and the friend is there, why knock at the other doors? On another day, the friend may be in another one of those houses, but today this is where the friend is. So, applying that, the first Beatitude today is where God's grace is, and God is pouring out love and strength. So allow your heart to stay there as long as it desires.

And that will be more fruitful in your prayer than feeling an obligation, as it were, to get through the entirety of the text. If you do want to pray with the entirety of the text, there's always tomorrow and the next day. But give your heart the freedom to stay where it feels drawn.

And then Francis uses an image. He often speaks of bees. Imitate the bees, who do not leave a flower as long as they can extract any honey from it. But if you do not—you know, since reading this, I've done this—you watch a bee: it lights on a flower and is busily extracting the honey or the pollen that it can find there. When it no longer finds any there, it leaves and moves on to the next, and repeats the process. And that's what Francis is saying as you go through the various verses of a scriptural passage.

But if you do not come upon anything that appeals to you after you have examined and tried it for a while—so you pray with the first Beatitude and it's rich, but it doesn't particularly open up for you on this given day—then go on to another. But proceed calmly and simply in this matter, and do not rush yourself.

So there's great freedom to follow wherever the Lord is leading in the prayer, and that's the richest way to pray with this kind of meditative or contemplative approach that Ignatius is presenting to us.

So in this session, we're going to continue with the theme of seeking freedom from sinfulness and weakness so that we can be strengthened to love and serve the Lord more. And I'm going to propose two passages. I'm only going to read one, but I propose First Corinthians 13:4–7, which is Paul's description, that classic description of love. Love is patient, love is kind, and so forth.

And then a second passage from Saint Paul, which is Romans 7:15–25. And that's where Paul grapples with, as we all do, the "I want the good, but I do the bad that I don't want to do." You know, "Who will set me free from this?" And of course, it's "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord," who is the Redeemer and the Savior. But it's a rich passage in which Paul puts into words the struggle that we often can feel.

This passage in First Corinthians 13, in which Paul describes the qualities of love—verses four through seven—is a very rich way to examine ourselves. I'd say, husbands, examine yourselves on this. These qualities—are they there in my life as I relate to my wife and my children? Wives, are these qualities there as you relate to your husbands and your children? Parents and children, as you relate to your parents, friends in the workplace, and in the Church. Are these qualities present?

So Paul says, love is patient. "Patior" from the Latin, it endures. It suffers. It doesn't give up. It stays the course. It does not take out frustration on others.

Is my love patient? This is the first quality of love that Paul gives when he sets out to describe what love is.

Love is kind. Could that word be applied to the way I relate to my spouse, to my children, to people in the workplace?

Love is not jealous. Could that be said of me? Are there places of jealousy in my life where it's hard for me to see others do well, and somehow I feel lessened by the fact that they do well? And could I ask God, if that's the case, for an increasing freedom from this and really to rejoice in the good that God does in others?

Love is not pompous. It doesn't set up, you know, take on airs or set itself up as better than others. When we meet truly humble people—and I don't mean people who have a poor image of self, but truly humble people like Mary or Jesus in the Gospel, or Thérèse, and so forth—we love humble people. There's something beautiful and attractive about them. Am I that way? Can I ask the Lord to grow in that?

Love is not inflated, just filled with its own self and its plans and its desires and hardly aware of others. This is John Paul II's law of the gift: that as long as we seek to be happy by insisting on my time, my plans, my programs to the exclusion of others, we'll never be happy. But when we make the gift of ourselves in love to others, a wonderful thing happens. We become happy.

Love is not inflated. It is not rude. Can that be said of me as I relate to my family members and others in my life?

Love does not seek its own interests, but looks to the interests of others. This is again the gift of self of which Saint John Paul II wrote so richly and so repeatedly.

It is not quick-tempered. Am I? Is there a place of healing to which the Lord is calling me there?

It does not brood over injury. Do I do that? Is it hard for me to forgive? Do things drag on in my heart—a sense of heaviness or something closed toward others where there’s been injury? Can something fresh happen there, something new, something healing?

Love does not rejoice over wrongdoing, never rejoices over evil, but rejoices with the truth. Love, Saint Paul says, bears all things. These habits or foibles of a spouse in a family, in the Church, believes all things, never gives up on anyone, hopes all things, always believes that God can turn a human heart toward Him and newness can happen. Love endures all things.

So it might be helpful at this stage of the Spiritual Exercises to take this passage. And if you get time, maybe just relisten again to what we've gone through or take the text and read it and let it be a kind of examination, self-examination on love together with the God who loves you so much, and inviting the Lord to show me, to show you, where He is calling us to grow in that love which is the heart of our whole Christian life.

If time allows, you might also want to move to this second passage, and that is Romans 7:15–25, which is a very rich biblical description of the struggle that we all undergo when we really seek freedom from sinfulness so that we can respond fully to God in lives of holiness.

Paul says, For I do not do the good that I want, but I do the evil that I do not want. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So then I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand. For I take delight in the law of God in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Miserable one that I am, who will deliver me from this mortal body? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

So as you pray with this text with great confidence, turn to the love of the Heavenly Father, the Blessed Trinity, the Savior, the Lord Jesus, and pray for increasing healing from sinfulness and anything that would hold you back from complete availability to God.

Very shortly, Ignatius is going to invite us to move into that space in which we seek to respond as fully to Christ as we can. May that blessing be given to all of us. Amen.