Essay Excerpt: Love is Always Conditional

Posted by Leonard J. DeLorenzo on Apr 29, 2021 11:48:00 AM

Editorial Note: This excerpt is taken from an essay by the same name originally published at Church Life Journal on December 18, 2018.

We want to say that love is unconditional. It seems right. It is equal parts comforting and challenging. It is comforting because if I am loved, then there is nothing I can do to lose that. It is challenging because in order to love, I have to will to be untroubled by obstacles. We do not want to say love is conditional because we fear submitting love to the twisted logic of relationship terrorism: if you do not meet my demands, I deprive you of what is good for you, or vice versa. We think of conditions as qualifications and we do not want to attach qualifications to love. So we say love is unconditional. But that is wrong. Love is always conditional.

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Topics: leonardjdelorenzo, love, saints, self-giving love, feast days, church life journal

He Emptied Himself

Posted by John Cavadini on Mar 29, 2021 1:12:00 PM

Editorial Note: This post was originally delivered as a reflection for Palm Sunday on Sunday, April 5, 2020.

“He emptied Himself,” Paul tells us in the second reading from Philippians (2:7). Who “emptied Himself?” “Christ Jesus,” Paul says, “though he was in the form of God.” The Creed explains what this means: in other words, “though He was in the form of God” because he was the “Son of God, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father,”—“Christ Jesus” in the “form of God” is that one the Creed speaks of, truly God from all eternity in the permanent bliss and blessedness that belongs to God the Trinity as an eternal exchange of the most intimate love. 

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Topics: Holy Week, self-giving love

Be Not Afraid: Accompanying Loved Ones with Mental Illness

Posted by Lisa Anderson on Oct 9, 2020 11:55:12 AM

I never used to be a wailer or fist banger. I didn’t understand what would drive people to do such things. That was before. Before my child’s brain broke. As my son slipped deeper into schizophrenia, I lost parts of myself, too. I lost my balance as I tried to navigate this bewildering maze of new behaviors and medical resources until I felt consumed by a rage and then a wailing cry to God to help me.

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Topics: self-giving love, mental health, Mental Illness Awareness Week, accompaniment

St. Maximilian Kolbe and the Grace of Self-Sacrificing Love

Posted by Carolyn Pirtle on Aug 14, 2020 3:10:19 PM

Today, the Church honors St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest who volunteered to die in place of a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz, thus embodying the teaching of Jesus, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). Yet this last and greatest act of St. Maximilian did not emerge from a vacuum; it was the result of a lifetime of being conformed to Christ through prayer and sacrifice. Only by consistently practicing self-denial, by dying to himself and taking up his cross daily, could St. Maximilian have been conformed to Christ to such a degree that he was in that pivotal moment able to imitate Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, laying down his life so that another might live. 

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Topics: human dignity, saints, Saturdays with the Saints, self-giving love, St. Maximilian Kolbe

He Emptied Himself

Posted by John Cavadini on Apr 6, 2020 7:31:00 PM

Editorial Note: This post was originally delivered as a reflection for Palm Sunday on Sunday, April 5, 2020.

“He emptied Himself,” Paul tells us in the second reading from Philippians (2:7). Who “emptied Himself?” “Christ Jesus,” Paul says, “though he was in the form of God.” The Creed explains what this means: in other words, “though He was in the form of God” because he was the “Son of God, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father,”—“Christ Jesus” in the “form of God” is that one the Creed speaks of, truly God from all eternity in the permanent bliss and blessedness that belongs to God the Trinity as an eternal exchange of the most intimate love. 

Read More

Topics: Holy Week, self-giving love

Living and Handing on the Faith

The McGrath Institute Blog helps Catholics live and hand on their faith in Jesus Christ, especially in the family, home and parish, and cultivates and inspires everyday leaders to live out the fullness and richness of their faith in the simple, little ways that make up Church life.

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