Stay Warm!
 Probably from time immemorial human beings have associated love with warmth. (God knows, after the week we have had we could use a little warmth!) There are some very simple anthropological reasons for this. When we embrace a loved one, hold a child, or gather with family and friends, there is physical warmth in that. Just to think of those we love seems to bring a sense of warmth. The risk we run, though, is in thinking of love as merely a “warm feeling.” And so, what happens in a relationship, in a marriage or in a family when, on a given day or perhaps for a period of time, that warm feeling no longer seems to be present? Has the love gone away? This is where we need a deeper understanding of what love is. Saint Paul offers just this kind of understanding in the second reading for Mass this Sunday. You’ll recognize it immediately, as it is without a doubt the number one requested reading for weddings: “Love is patient, love is kind, etc.” While this reading is probably so frequently chosen for weddings precisely because of its sentimental poetry, to listen to it carefully one is quickly disabused of any merely sentimental notion of love. After all, Paul describes here a “patient” love, in other words, a love that can ride the waves of emotion. It is a love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” a love that “never fails.” In the end, it is an intentional, chosen, enduring love for the sake of the other, just as God loves us. It is just this kind of love that we strive to cultivate here at St. Ambrose. With that in mind, stay warm! Fr. Thom |
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