Sunday Reflection | To love God

When we are asked to introduce ourselves, we usually begin with our name, age, and other basic facts related to our families and occupations. This census-related information, however, is not nearly enough to help people learn who we are in any deep and meaningful sense. The most cursory Google search could reveal such information in an instant. No, to help people really understand who we are we have to tell them what our passions are, what gets us out of bed in the morning, and what commands our attention most completely. Indeed, we are sometimes shy about sharing this kind of information about ourselves precisely because it reveals too much of our interior lives to people who may not be interested in connecting with us beyond some kind of transactional or professional mode.

In the end, who we really are most fundamentally is defined by what we love. Put another way, what we love shapes who we are in the hidden depths of our being. The Lord Jesus addresses this most intimate core in us when He commands us to love the Lord with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. Heart, soul, and mind: these are the interior engines of love. They are also the deepest expression of who we are. To love someone or something means that our hearts, souls, and minds seek out and find rest in what or whom we love. However, what the heart, soul, and mind seek out and rest in also shapes or misshapes these three dimensions of our interiority. The command to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind reveals that only in loving God with such undivided fullness do our hearts, souls, and minds come to their highest fulfillment. It’s only by loving God that we become who we are meant to be. Let’s take a brief look at how this is true.

To love God with all our heart does not mean conjuring sentiments of affection toward Him. Heart here means what coaches and sports fans say of the greatest athletes when they praise them for having “heart.” It is the capacity for endurance, an unconquerable striving. When the heart reaches up to God by His grace, it expands into a perseverance that no obstacle can thwart. This is the heart that the martyrs displayed and that ordinary believers show when they cling to the Lord through thick and thin. Such heart encourages others and lends strength to others in their striving for God,a just as great athletes do for their teammates.

To love God with all our soul involves turning toward the Lord as squarely as we can, basking in the rays of His glory and allowing that light to reflect outward from us. In this way, the soul is like a mirror. The soul reflects the grandeur of that toward which it is turned. To love money is to be a kind of living advertisement for the attractiveness of wealth. Such a love shrinks and cheapens the soul. To love God with all our soul, on the other hand, is to magnify Him, just as Our Lady did from the moment she was conceived without sin. Such is the reflected glory that shines from souls that love the Lord.

To love God with all our minds is to expand them into a wonder and curiosity that encompasses literally everything. It is no accident that universities—places where all subjects and disciplines are studied—were first established by monks and other lovers of God. Without faith, the horizon of our minds shrinks and becomes cramped. We may become masters of much information, but there is no joy or wonder in all the data we have amassed. To love God with all our mind, on the other hand, is to reach up to the living source of order and reason inscribed in all things. Such love gives the mind the space to be truly free and creative.

The Lord commands us to love Him with all the power of heart, soul, and mind because only in Him can heart, soul, and mind fully flower into what He created them to be, what He created us to be. It is not uncommon in homilies to hear the beautiful quote from St. Irenaeus that “the glory of God is man fully alive.” This is true and deserves its repetition. However, the line that comes next is perhaps even more important because it shows us the way to this life and glory: “and the life of man is vision of God.” That vision begins when our heart, soul, and mind turn with all their strength toward God in love.