When the Homily is about Immunology

I don't know how to love Him

Like the song, I feel the same way (minus being a female or a prostitute). I've been thinking alot about how to love God. The Scriptures tell us much about how we express that love: keeping His commands and providing charity, to name a couple. But what I am thinking about (right or wrong) is how to internalize that love...how to feel that love. As evangelicals we used to talk alot about having a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" as if to give the impression that Jesus was indeed our friendly "co-pilot" as the bumper sticker says. I sometimes had the distinct fear that I was like an adult man who still had an imaginary friend.

I want to grab onto something deeper...while avoiding the trap of hyper-emotionalism and a dead intellectual faith, because I've been in both places and do not believe either to be very secure. Experiencing Christ in the sacraments has certainly brought a good deal of illumination to me - oh I've not said that strongly enough - it has rather completely turned my Christianity around (there, that's better). But, I have been thinking about the conept we often here from the fathers and mothers of the Church in regards to all of life being a sacrament and I am also reminded of that oft-used invocation of the Holy Spirit, "who art everywhere present and fillest all things."

There are so many things and people I love in my life...and yet I am not sure that I have the faintest notion of what love is beyond the hedonism which demands that I derive some sort of pleasure from them (hence the connect between things and people?). Parenting teaches me much about this, as a new parent is apt to quickly realize and (if they are like me) struggle with the fact that we are there to serve them and not the other way around. Fr. Jonah once said that Christianity is all about making our "I" plural.

I feel like life is beautiful...there is so much wonder to be seen and experienced on a day to day basis...even the simple things like wrestling with my boys, reading to my girls, sharing a good Sctoch and "virginia weed" with an extraordinary gentleman, or dancing with my wife should all become touchpoints with the Almighty - the Holy Spirit being everywhere present and filling all things. I guess it is a matter of opening my eyes to this reality and putting these celebrations of life into the context of my "I" becoming plural. So much would change, I think.

Is loving God found therein?