My wife, some good friends and I had just finished dinner and were sitting around the dining room table talking about God the other night. The conversation started with a question something like this: “We begin our spiritual journeys by trying to be obedient—we do things because God tells us we’re supposed to. Things like going to church every Sunday—things like praying—things like loving people we don’t even like. And as we practice this obedience, we somehow grow in faith and that faith becomes our motivating force in our spiritual journey. But how do we move from doing things out of obedience and faith to doing these things out of love?”

To be sure, with eight people, there were more than a few responses from different points of view. All of them good, all of them giving each of us something to think about.

I think it’s common and a good thing for all of us who have sought to grow in our closeness to God to look back every once in  while and to take pride in a way, that we are no longer in the place on our spiritual journey that we once were—that we are moving forward toward God—to be grateful that we’re not sitting still and not moving backward. To be sure, God did most of the work, but to move at all, we had to at least cooperate. But in this looking back at where we’ve been, we can’t help but notice others in that place now that we once were. And if we’re not careful, we can develop a sinful pride in thinking how good we are in comparison to them. What we need to do instead is to understand that no matter where we might be right now, we have barely begun our journey and we have so much farther to go—an infinite distance before we will be one with God.

Scripture tells us we should aspire to love God so much that we want to do everything just to make Him happy and to please Him. The saints are prime examples of that love, giving up everything for Him. But the saints possess two things in abundance that most of us severely lack. Those two things are Obedience and Humility. Obedience is not a lesser thing that we leave behind once we learn to move through faith and love. As one person pointed out in our discussion, Jesus did everything, even death on the cross, strictly out of obedience to the Father. And the saints though great they are, struggle often with many trials and tribulations trying to distance them from God, yet they manage to remain strong only through their determination to remain obedient.

Dick Phillips recently wrote a blog here on “Choosing Ignorance”, I hope you’ll read it. One thing he asks in it is why do we embrace some things in our religion/scripture while we choose to ignore others? I think this is also true when we talk of obedience. We choose to be obedient to some things and consider others things not so necessary. We can say I go to Mass every Sunday, sing in the choir, go to adoration weekly, pray every morning, read the bible, go to bible study classes, say honestly I have no mortal sins, try my hardest not to commit even venial ones and go to reconciliation on a regular basis—I do this, I do that—I am obedient!

So what about the part where God commands us to be Holy (1 Pet 1:16), the part where He commands us to be Perfect (Mt 5:48)? What about the part where God commands us to love Him more than anyone or anything –where he says if we don’t love Him more than our mother or father or daughter or son (and yes, that includes grandchildren), you are not worthy of me (1 Jn 2:15-17, Mt 10:37)?

Are we obedient even to that?

The original question—this Love that we’re looking for, that we increasingly thirst for as the motivational force to drive our lives. This Love is not something we can somehow earn or find somewhere or give to ourselves. This Love comes to us only as a gift from God. It’s a gift He wants to give each and every one of us. This Love is more than just a thing though. This Love that we’re talking about is a person. This Love is Jesus Christ. And this Love begins to flow through us as He allows us to become a part of Him and His life. And He gives Himself, He gives this Love, to us in proportion to how obedient we are in surrendering our will and our life to Him.