Set me like a seal on your heart,
like a seal on your arm.
For love is strong as death,
the flash of it is a flash of fire,
a flame of Yahweh himself.
Song of Songs 8:6
Reflection:
The Feast of Love has come. All during this time of preparation we have tried to be pilgrims on the road to conversion and reparation. Perhaps we arrive at today’s feast just beginning to understand what his conversion and reparation is all about. This is a gift in itself! “The end of our journeying is to arrive at the place where we started and know it for the very first time.” says the poet T.S. Eliot. What better gift could God give us on this day, but to fill our hearts with a profound understanding of how much they need to be converted to the gospel, to be rooted and grounded in him?
This is a day when the individual sparks of our love can come together communally and become flame. St. Paul reminds us “fan into flame the gift I gave you…become strong, loving and wise…put up with your share of the hardships which the gospel entails (2Tim.1) This day is not our arrival point, but our departure point so that we may continue our pilgrimage of conversion to the ways of gospel loving.
Canticle of Corinthians (13: 1-9, 13)
Antiphon:
Now is fulfilled the plan of the Father:
to make Christ the heart of the world.
If I have all the eloquence of humans or of angels,
but speak without love, I am simply a gong booming or a cymbal clashing.
If I have the gift of prophecy, understanding all the mysteries there are, and if I have faith in all its fullness to move mountains, but without love, then I am nothing at all.
If I give away all that I possess, piece by piece and if I even let them take my body to burn, but am without love, it will do me no good whatever.
Love is always patient and kind; it is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offense and is not resentful.
Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth;
it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, to endure whatever comes.
Love does not come to an end. The gift of prophecy will fail,
the gift of languages will not continue forever and the time will come when knowledge too must fail.
There are three things that last: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.
Glory be…
Reading: Matthew: 11:25-39
Thanks to Guadalupe newsletter for this Novena