The Profit of Practiced Love

In the world today, we often have wrong ideas about love shoved in our face. Love is equated to lust, or love is only given when deserved or earned, or love is even secondary to my work, my success, and my own personal happiness.
 
And yet, if Jesus is God, and God is Love, then we know exactly what love is meant to look like: it looks like giving our whole hearts to Him, even when it’s painful, even when we think we deserve to be exempt from it. Love is a choice and sometimes, it’s one of the most difficult we have to make, because we must choose it again and again every day. We watch Jesus make that choice in every word He speaks, in every action He takes. We watch Him heal His children, rebuke them, teach them, allow them to bind Him and beat Him before putting Him to death… and then we watch Him return for them. We watch Him as He rises to the Father and opens the gates of heaven to them, to us. What wondrous love is this.
 
“But I can’t do that,” you might be thinking. “I can’t match the love of Jesus; I can barely remember to do my fasting, to give alms, to pray more each day during Lent! I have so much that is already demanded of me, and somehow, I have to also love like Jesus? There’s no way.” And to be fair… you’d be right. We, of our own power, can’t love like Jesus does. “It is true that the creature loves less because she is less,” St. Bernard of Clairvaux tells us. However, he goes on to say, “But if she loves with her whole being, nothing is lacking where everything is given.” Whether you are someone who tends toward scrupulosity, attempting to discipline yourself “perfectly” for God, or whether you are someone who tends toward choosing the path of least resistance, St. Bernard’s words can provide the framework for how to grow in devotion through discipline.

​We can’t expect to “flip a switch” and give everything in love to Jesus if we do not choose to begin in relationship. Saints are those men and women who chose to treasure a relationship with the Lord in prayer every single day. We must learn to join our fasting and prayer and our giving together, rather than separating them out into three different boxes. Fasting without prayer is simply a strange dieting practice; almsgiving without prayer is kindness devoid of devotion. 
 
So how do we accomplish this devoted discipline? We have to first be honest with ourselves, making choices regarding fasting and almsgiving that truly challenge our earthly comfort, forcing us to rely on the Lord more fully. Once we know what those things are—through good, holy discernment—then we can blend them with prayers of devotion, of surrender, and of longing for God’s Kingdom. 
 
One of the best sources for prayer, particularly prayers that embody that devotion, discipline, and surrender that we truly seek during this season is the Book of Psalms. I always encourage people toward the practice of the Liturgy of the Hours, because it belongs to the whole Church; it is the prayer of the Bride to her Bridegroom, the prayer of Christ Himself, along with the entirety of His people, given to the Father (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, §84). However, even simply reading through the Psalms in whatever way you choose can also provide the depth of prayer we seek in this season, for “in the Psalms are expressed and interwoven with joy and suffering, the longing for God and the perception of our own unworthiness, happiness and the feeling of abandonment, trust in God and sorrowful loneliness, fullness of life and fear of death. The whole reality of the believer converges in these prayers… Since the Psalms are prayers they are expressions of the heart and of faith with which everyone can identify and in which that experience of special closeness to God—to which every human being is called—is communicated” (Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience, 22 June 2011).
 
If beginning something like the Liturgy of the Hours or reading through the Book of Psalms feels too overwhelming, one Psalm in particular comes to mind as a possible choice: Psalm 42. When I am hungry as I fast, hurting from the lack of whatever food I have chosen to give up, I can turn to the Lord with King David’s words on my lips: “Like the deer that yearns for running streams, so my soul is yearning for you, my God. My soul is thirsting for God, the God of my life.” When I wish I didn’t have to give up whatever alms I have chosen to give to those in need, I can cry out “Why are you cast down, my soul, why groan within me? Hope in God; I will praise him still, my savior and my God.” If I allow the words of Scripture to penetrate my daily life, soon they will come so readily that praying them will be like breathing: natural, desirable, life-giving.
 
This is practiced love: to give more and more each moment, choosing even when we fall to come back to our Lord in humility and try again. To make prayer as integral to our lives as the air we breathe. And the profit of such a love…well, that is Love Himself. And there is no greater treasure to be found.

Psalm 42

 
As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, the living God.
When can I enter and see the face of God?
My tears have been my bread day and night,
as they ask me every day, “Where is your God?"
 
Those times I recall
as I pour out my soul,
When I would cross over to the shrine of the Mighty One,
to the house of God,
Amid loud cries of thanksgiving,
with the multitude keeping festival.
Why are you downcast, my soul;
why do you groan within me?
Wait for God, for I shall again praise him,
my savior and my God.
 
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I remember you
From the land of the Jordan and Hermon,
from Mount Mizar,
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your torrents,
and all your waves and breakers
sweep over me.
 
By day may the LORD send his mercy,
and by night may his righteousness be with me!
I will pray to the God of my life,
 
I will say to God, my rock:
“Why do you forget me?
Why must I go about mourning
with the enemy oppressing me?”
It shatters my bones, when my adversaries reproach me,
when they say to me every day: “Where is your God?”
 
Why are you downcast, my soul,
why do you groan within me?
Wait for God, for I shall again praise him,
my savior and my God.

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Jennifer is a consecrated virgin in the Diocese of Houma-Thibodaux where she works as the Director of Discipleship Formation for Our Lady of Prompt Succor in Chackbay. She is currently completing the final stage of the License in Sacred Theology program with the Pontifical Faculty of Theology at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake.