This year the parents in our Family of Faith program have been watching and discussing a new series on FORMED.org called The Search. The seven-part series, hosted by Chris Stefanick, explores the deepest questions of the human heart — Why am I here? What's life all about? What happens when we die? — and shows how Jesus Christ sheds light on those questions. I can't recommend the series enough, and I encourage you to watch it for free on FORMED.org.

This weekend we'll be watching and discussing Episode 6 of the series, “Am I saved?”, which explores what Jesus accomplished for us by his death and Resurrection. This quote from Chris Stefanick really stuck out as I previewed the video:

We think that this whole Catholic experience is about how hard it is to love God…. The reality is that the difficult thing about Christianity is that a love mighty enough to create space and time is all aimed at you. That’s the hard thing about Christianity.

It seems to me that one of the deepest obstacles to growing in holiness is simply learning to trust in God's unconditional love for us. Yes, the measure of our holiness is our love for God, but we learn to love God only when we become aware of his love for us. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Only when we begin to understand more deeply the love that God has shown to us, especially in the death and Resurrection of Jesus, are our wounded hearts healed enough to love him in return. Only when we know that God always loves us, even when we have sinned or when we are feeling spiritually gloomy, are we able to turn away from our sin, resist our interior desolation, and love him in return.

One of my favorite saints is the young Carmelite nun St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, who had a deep awareness of God's love for us and of the great dignity of the Christian life. In October of 1906, just a month before her death at the age of twenty-six, Elizabeth wrote a note entitled “Let Yourself be Loved” to her Prioress Mother Germaine. The words she wrote are worth reflecting on for all of us:

“You are uncommonly loved,” loved by that love of preference that the Master had here below for some and which brough them so far. He does not say to you as to Peter: “Do you love Me more than these?” Mother, listen to what He tells you: “Let yourself be loved more than these! That is, without fearing any obstacle will be a hindrance to it, for I am free to pour out My love on whom I wish! 'Let yourself be loved more than these' is your vocation. It is in being faithful to it that you will make Me happy for you will magnify the power of My Love. This love can rebuild what you have destroyed. Let yourself be loved more than these.” ...

He rejoices to build up in you by His love and for His glory, and it is He alone who wants to work in you, even though you will have done nothing to attract this grace except that which a creature can do: works of sin and misery... He loves you like that. He loves you “more than these.” He will do everything in you. He will go to the end: for when a soul is loved by Him to this extent, in this way, loved by an unchanging and creative love, a free love which transforms as it pleases Him, oh how far this soul will go!

Mother, the fidelity that the Master asks of you is to remain in communion with Love, flow into, be rooted in this Love who wants to mark your soul with the seal of His power and His grandeur. You will never be commonplace if you are vigilant in love! But in the hours when you feel only oppression and lassitude, you will please Him even more if you faithfully believe that He is still working, that He is loving you just the same, and even more: because His love is free and that is how He wants to be magnified in you; and you will let yourself be loved “ more than these.”