“And this is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more…
so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.” Phil 1:9-10
The letters of St. Paul offer us some of the earliest
glimpses of life in the first Christian communities. Today we hear part of his
letter to the Philippians. Although he writes from prison, Paul’s words are
full of hope and reassurance, instruction and guidance.
In this letter and many of his others, Paul affirms that love
can make us pure, blameless and ready for the day of Christ. Some of our
greatest saints have followed this way of love, finding it the quickest path to
Jesus. St. Therese of the Child Jesus, desiring to serve God in some great way
yet living a humble and obscure life in a cloistered Carmelite convent,
discovered her vocation in St. Paul’s call to love.
In her memoir, Story
of a Soul, St. Therese tells of finding the heart of her vocation:
“Since my longing for martyrdom was powerful and unsettling,
I turned to the epistles of St. Paul in the hope of finally finding an answer.
By chance the 12th and 13th chapters of the 1st epistle to the Corinthians… I
found this encouraging theme: Set your
desires on the greater gifts, and I will show you the way which surpasses all
others. For the Apostle insists that the greater gifts are nothing at all
without love… love is surely the best path leading directly to God… Love appeared to me to be the hinge
for my vocation. Indeed I knew that… the Church had a heart… aflame with love….
love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything… love is everlasting.
Then… I proclaimed: O Jesus, my love, at last I have found
my calling: my call is love… In the heart of the Church, my mother, I will be
love, and thus I will be all things...”
This call to love is the heart of all Christian vocations.
Whatever our station in life, we are all called to increase love in the world.
This Advent, let us seek out little ways to show great love every day, because
it is love that will prepare us for the coming of the Child Jesus at Christmas.
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