Dear Friends,

Faith, Hope, and Love abide, these three… (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Love, in the end, is always cruciform. Perhaps that’s what T.S. Eliot means in his
magnificent Four Quartets when he observes: “To apprehend/The point of
intersection of the timeless/With time, is an occupation for the saint/No occupation
either, but something given/And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love/Ardour and
selflessness and self-surrender.”

No matter how hard we seek substitutes, only this sort of love satisfies. No matter
how much we flee a cross-shaped love, peace will elude us until we accept it. And
the first step to acceptance is to ponder the mystery of God’s love for us, the God
who loves us and gives himself for us.

St John puts it well. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he has
loved us and sent his Son to be the atonement for our sins” (1 John 4:10). In other
words, we can love with a cruciform love because first, last, and always, we are
loved that way by God.

As the holiest days of the year draw near, the Church invites us to contemplate this
overwhelming love, to accept it, and to respond. I can think of no better expression
than St. Anthony of Padua’s “Sermones Dominicales et Festivi” in which he writes:
“Christ who is your life is hanging before you, so that you may look at the Cross as
in a mirror… If you look closely, you will be able to realize how great your human
dignity and value are… Nowhere other than looking at himself in the mirror of the
Cross can man better understand how much he is worth.”

And by God’s grace that understanding will lead to acceptance, and that
acceptance will lead to response, so that we, too, can love God and others with a
cross-shaped love.

God bless,

Fr. John Pietropaoli
Two Priests and a Mic podcaster