“Love is . . .”  St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 13

“Love is Love is Love is Love is Love is Love is Love is Love.”  Lin-Manuel Miranda, The Tony Awards

What are you doing for St. Valentines Day?  To whom are you sending a card, giving flowers or chocolate, or doing something nice?  And what are you expecting to receive?  How will others show their love for you?

There’s a certain sweetness, compassion and mercy in both the giving and receiving of love; in the doing of love.  There is also something magically elusive about being IN love.  People make a lot of money writing songs, books or making movies about it!

What about just Being in the Presence of Love?  And what about just Being Love?

God is Love.  This much is true.  Love is of God.  This is also true.  I believe it is also true that to Be God is to Be Love.  And that makes me believe that to Be Love is to Be God, in the sense that this is how we most closely tap into the divine source in which and through which we live and love and have our Being.    

It certainly is true of Jesus.  In the Gospel of John Jesus has seven great “I Am” statements.  “I Am the Light, I Am the Door,” and so on.  It is curious to me that He doesn’t say “I Am Love.”  Why is that do you think?  You know why I think?  He doesn’t have to say it because it is SO obvious.  His life is a life of Love.  If you so desire read the Gospel of John, or any of the others for that matter, through this lens of Jesus as Love. His first miracle is at a wedding—a celebration of love—in which He exhibits His Love by turning water into wine so that the party can continue.  I LOVE that!  This is followed by the great “God so loved the world” statement in John 3:16.  The Love of God is fully on display in the life of Jesus, and even in His death where He pours out His Life and Love Blood on the cross.  And then Love is seen in full bloom as He Lives again, proving that the Love of God overcomes everything, even death!

This is what the disciples most remembered about Jesus; not His teaching but His Love.  That is why John, who is called The Beloved, writes all about Love in his first epistle.  Love is what compelled them to go into the world.  The first followers of The Way of Love embraced this life of love and were BEING Love in a very love-less society.  What mattered most to them was being in the Presence of Love, and that’s why they so fearlessly faced death, many as martyrs, seeing it not as the end of life, but the beginning and fulfillment of Life spent in the Presence of Love.

Being in the Presence of Love.  That’s what matters most in the Eternal Today.  What does that look like for you?  For me today that means being in the Presence of my oldest daughter, Son-in-law and two beautiful grandchildren.  But it also means Being in the Presence of other Loved Ones, Living in the temporal as well as the eternal Today Now, who are distant and yet so close.  And of course, it means Being in The Presence of Love.   Love is Being In Love.  Love is Being.  Love is Love.

“I it Am, The Might and the Goodness of the Fatherhood; I it Am, the Wisdom of the Motherhood; I it Am, the Light and the Grace that is all Blessed Love; I it Am that maketh Thee to Love.” Julian of Norwich

Note:  In the Western Christian Tradition Lent begins this Wednesday, Feb. 17^th.  In the Eastern Tradition (which I observe) it begins March 15^th.  I have decided to write a series during Lent entitled “The Prisons We Live In”, inspired by and based on the writing of John O’Donahue.  I will be posting these on Wednesdays starting this week.