The associated reading for this reflection can be found in your Every Sacred Sunday Mass journal or online here.
One of my heroes in the Catholic faith is Blessed Solanus Casey, who was a Capuchin priest that spent the majority of his priestly life as a porter (doorkeeper) in Detroit, Michigan. He was known for being so present and loving to whoever came to the monastery that healing miracles started happening. When he died in1957, there were over 6,000 entries that he had noted. He’s such a witness of what it means to love God and to love people.
Blessed Solanus shows us that holiness is incredibly simple: love God, love people. Loving the Lord with your heart, the source of life, as it says in Proverbs 4:23, means it’s a committed, personal decision. It means you are called to be in relationship with a PERSON, not a feeling, or an emotion, or an idea, or a “good vibe.” Who you commit your life to will dictate every decision: how you spend your money, who you spend your time with, what you do with your life. 2 Corinthians 5:15 says, “He indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who for their sake died and was raised.” When I make the decision to be in relationship with Jesus, that means I no longer live for myself, but for Him who died for me.
Loving the Lord with your mind means developing the mind of Christ. “Do not conform yourselves to this age, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” (Romans 12:2). How do you cultivate the mind of Christ? You cannot live and love what you do not know. By meditating and reading the Bible, we can better understand how God speaks, how He loves, how He interacts with people. We can know God because of the Word He has given us.
Finally, loving God with all your strength means using the gifts and talents that the Lord has given you. Offer up what you’ve been given for His full use. Blessed Solanus understood that the life he had was a gift that was not meant to be lived for himself, but for others.
Friends, loving the Lord this way is not something only reserved for really holy people. This is the call for you and for me. There is not a higher aspiration than this, no higher goal in life. And once we do this, we will realize that we too are not far from the Kingdom of God.
Ali Hoffman loves Jesus and she loves people. She is a full-time Catholic evangelist based out of Dallas, Texas.