After posting the previous blog, I dashed out to Eucharistic Adoration with my friend Shawn. There was a small service tonight, and the visiting priest spoke some things that were so appropriately timed for what I had just written!I actually took notes on what he said by typing them into my phone. He said that receptive love is harder to do because to accept love is to be made vulnerable. In that way, he said, it is easier to simply give. But we Christians are charged first to ACCEPT Christ's love. He said that every sin is a failure to love in some form. He told us to love passionately like Christ taught us to by way of His Passion (and this reminds me of the desperate love I spoke of in my last blog). He asked us, "How else but through a broken heart may Christ enter in?"
So beautiful! Being more receptive to love and loving desperately is precisely what I just spoke about in my last blog! :-)
The priest also spoke of the 3 forms of love as being Ergos (sexual love), Philae (love for our family and friends), and Agape (love for/from God). I did not realize that this is the origin of why Philadelphia is considered the City of Brotherly Love! Neat!
After that, Shawn and I prayed the Rosary in front of the Blessed Sacrament and then I went to Confession.
When we got back to my apartment, Shawn and I played with my doves. And then Shawn did a beautiful thing. He told me all about the silent retreat he went on this weekend, and the he told me that he was pretty certain he had a vocation to the priesthood -- and specifically to the Miles Christi order (meaning "Soldier for Christ," an expression that has been dear to him ever since he took on the Brown Scapular this summer). A huge grin swept over his face when he told me, and I hugged him joyfully.
We spent the next 2.5 hours talking about our faith and our lives as the doves flew around the room like the Holy Spirit! What a blessing I have in my friendship with this wonderful man of God! His faith is truly a strong pillar, and I know that he is called to very, very BIG THINGS!!
On the drive home, he texted me, saying I should run out to look at the rainbow that was cast over the moon. I did, but of course it was not there for me to see. It was a special gift only for him. Nobody sees rainbows at night! You need the sun and the rain...or, if not that, a deep love for our Heavenly Father...which indeed Shawn has!
