Today’s Lenten quote about love/compassion:

This one sentence is so packed with meaning for me that I hardly know how to write about it in one entry–but here goes:

The word “animated” makes me think about how Christ’s love, poured into our hearts, gives great spiritual life to the soul. It is like the breath of God, breathing life into the inanimate clay of the first human. On our own, we are often as if “dead” or “unconscious”–so to speak–compared to the dynamic life that Christ brings to our souls  (whole persons).

In Christian tradition, the “love of Christ” is often strongly associated with the Holy Spirit. So it is that I sometimes think of this “love of Christ” as the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts.  The Holy Spirit is what Risen Christ breathed into the disciples:

When [Jesus] had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit…”  (John 20:22)

The Holy Spirit is what “animates” us with the love of Christ. I think Pope John XXIII (now Saint John XXIII) was fully aware that the Holy Spirit draws people together by the power of love. This is the kind of unity that is built on empathy for one another. This is the kind of “love one another” we need today in our world–a world filled with electronic messages of hate.

Hate divides and conquers others. Love believes in the dignity of other humans and reaches out to share and embrace–and that provides a kind of loving unity.

Hate tears down and destroys. Love creates, builds up, increases life.

The Holy Spirit that God pours into our hearts is the Spirit of Love, and it is this Spirit who will unite us more fully in this life, and unite us completely in heaven.

Until next time, Amen!