A couple of weeks ago I got a phone call from a girl who was a student when I was the University Chaplain in Liverpool. We used to have many conversations about morality and faith, and Marie would always be questioning and wondering. I often used to wonder whether anything would ever make sense to her until one day I found her in our entrance hall. She was sitting with Mabel. Mabel lived on the streets and often came into our building. She’d been badly beaten up and was coming into the Chaplaincy for help when she collapsed and Marie and her friend had found her in the doorway. She was semi- conscious and obviously very ill. Marie’s friend had gone for help but Marie had covered her with a blanket and put a pillow under her feet. She’d washed some of the blood off her face and her hands and then taken off her shoes and socks and was washing her feet and singing to her very gently. I was mesmerised at the love this girl was showing. As I watched, I knew that Marie for all her questioning and wondering had it right. She had become love for Mabel

WHAT REALLY MATTERS?

It struck me then that all our theological arguments, all our soul searching, all the questions that we ask matter little to God. All that matters is love. We can be good Catholics, keeping all the rules and not have a lot of love in our hearts for the stranger and the orphan and the asylum seeker and those who live on the fringes. It seems to me that if we love we will begin to understand the ways of God. Don’t let it be all about being right and being moral and keeping the rules let it be about love and you’ll have a genuine experience of the God who is love.

I think that one of the biggest areas of conversion that we’re called to is in the whole realm of love. One of the questions to ask is whether or not we have been so overwhelmed by love that we have become love for a world that is hungry? So many of us seem to think it’s about doing loving things and it’s fantastic when we do but it’s only part of the call. Mother Teresa once said that when we do loving things we are still one step removed from the heart of the Gospel because the Gospel invites us to ‘become’ so that love flows through us. To become love is to be so converted and transformed that love simply flows from that hidden well that bubbles up inside us and loving actions become the only response that we can give. There is a danger that we get so caught up with the spectacular gifts of healing, deliverance, prophecy and tongues that we forget to ask to be filled with love. There is a real risk that our ministries can blind us to the heart of the Gospel as we rush around proclaiming the Good News and yet Paul tells us along with faith and hope, love is all that will last and everything else will pass away.

FRUIT THAT WILL LAST

Just recently at the Good News editorial meeting, during our prayer time, a word was given that it’s only by becoming love that we will bear fruit, fruit that will last. I would invite you to take some time every day praying that you become love in a world that is struggling to understand what real love is. Every time I read the papers or watch the television I’m always saddened by the stories I’m faced with. A page in the paper doesn’t go by without stories of wars, violence, rapes, people using one another, victims of racism and sexism telling their stories. Our television screens are full of the horrors of Iraq and Afghanistan. It paints a gloomy picture but I guess no more than at any other time in the world’s history. It simply shows us very clearly that people are in desperate need, searching for peace and fulfilment but usually living in fear and reacting to others out of fear.

In his Gospel Matthew describes those people as being like sheep without a shepherd. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen sheep without a shepherd but they run around like headless chickens hurting themselves and others. It’s a good analogy. The Gospel tells us that Jesus felt sorry for them and began to teach them. There is always hope for the world because of the presence of Jesus and His love. That love needs to be shared to let people know that real love is the answer to their searching. So become love for the sake of the world and be a real sign of contradiction as love flows freely from your transformed heart.

Fr Chris Thomas heads up the Irenaeus Project. He is a member of the Emmaus Family of Prayer and a priest of the Liverpool Diocese.