LOVE AND EVERYTHING ELSE

DANIEL MACEDA

As a prospective psychologist, relationships are my research; as a philosophy major, my thought experiment; and as a Catholic, my duty for discernment. These areas, along with (somewhat turbulent) personal experience, have set me up for a lot of thinking on the nature of relationships, including our own one with God — for what is prayer but growing in relationship with God? Like any relationship, we need to put in the work to meaningfully grow together. So let’s dive into thinking of how we are in relationship with God, and see where we can get by thinking of how we grow in all of our relationships.

Our starting point, the only starting point, is that we’re already in relation! Because it is the fundamental truth that our being here means God has allowed us to be here. Our existence, which we do not sustain ourselves, must be sustained intentionally by Someone outside of us. More than that, this does not benefit a Creator who is already perfect, but a creation that is imperfect and can grow to be better. And for us to grow in goodness means growing closer to Goodness itself. So your existence is a sign of the love of God, who by creating you as unique shows a care equally unique and a desire to grow closer to you. Being means being upheld, being

DANIEL MACEDA

means being loved, and being means being in relation. By being, we are being with God and being called closer to God.

Despite this, a lot of people find different ways to avoid growing closer to God. Some treat God as distant: “If I was him, I wouldn’t care about me.” Others view the relationship in a transactional way: “If God wanted me to believe in him, he’d give me a sign.” And it is true, we don’t have to grow closer to God; we can accept the minimal amount by existing and having nothing else to do with God. But successful, meaningful relationships, romantic and platonic, aren’t built on dismissal or on self-service. The self-serving relationships in our life aren’t the fulfilling ones; the distant relationships leave us feeling isolated. We find meaning in relationships when opening up and learning about the other person in a way that builds trust. If this holds true for the people in our lives who we know are imperfect, imagine how much more true it is when referring to our relationship with Love itself.[1] So how do we grow in these relationships? For any of them, the crucial first step of growth, the first step towards trust, is to just spend time with the other person.

Think about the people you care about; how much time have you spent with them recently? Likewise, how much time have you spent with God? Quality time — one of Gary Chapman’s five love languages of how we express and receive love — is the giving of one’s undivided attention to another; I leave it to your discretion of how the other four languages might apply. You might spend it in vocal prayer, or contemplating biblical readings. Maybe you reflect on your day to become aware of how God has moved through your life. At its base, quality time is an awareness of the other in a way where you truly see them as they are. Have you taken this time to acknowledge God? Can you look back at times, good and bad, where He was with you? The amazing thing is that God wants to love us, and the more time we spend with our partner, the more we realize it and learn to appreciate it. We grow closer to God as we see Him move in our life, and that allows us to let Him in further, so that we can be with Him through good and bad as well.

And on that note, it is a truth we all experience in some way that love — the gritty, genuine kind — often involves some hurt. Sometimes we’re the cause of it, which is still true in our relationship with God, and sometimes things are outside of our control. The beautiful thing about our relationship with God is that His greatest sign of love for us was bearing our suffering, “[f]or God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.”[2] He knows that sometimes life hurts, and it can make us angry, or sad, or bitter. He knows it because when you love someone, it hurts to see them hurting, and this too is part of the mystery of His bearing our suffering. When we learn to see Him not only in our pleasures, but in our sufferings, it transforms us in powerful ways. When we learn to invite Him into our suffering, it brings us together with Him. To love someone wholly and completely is to make their good your own, to make their happiness and suffering one with yours. That is what God asks you, with His love for you that shook the earth and stars: to let Him in to love you, make His happiness your own, and somehow learn to love Him too. It is with meekness that the Creator of the universe came down as a man to bear your sufferings, that you may simply know this.

While we started with how our other relationships affect how we see God, it is really our relationship with God that ought to shape how we view our other relationships. It’s the basis that allows us to love, to stretch our hearts in ways we couldn’t do by our power alone. It’s what allows us to care when it hurts, and be kind while we suffer — if we only loved others when it makes us feel better, we wouldn’t love others for very long. And by loving Love itself, we find ourselves in proper relation amidst others to love them rightly. The first and last relationship of our life is with our God. When we put everything else into that context, we are able to fully, wholly, truly love our friends and partners, too.

From who we are to what we find fulfilling, our relationship with God informs everything. Spend time with Him and grow closer with Him not just as you would any relationship, but more intimately than any other, because all other love flows properly from this. I end with a poem by Joseph Whelan, a Catholic priest, whose words were later echoed by Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe (“Falling in Love”):

Nothing is more practical than finding God, than Falling in Love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in Love, stay in love, and it will decide everything. ❖

Daniel Maceda is a third-year undergraduate studying philosophy and psychology. An SLE alumnus and member of the Catholic community, Maceda has found deepening his knowledge of Catholicism has led him to a deepening of his faith. He loves reflecting on love and suffering while praying the Rosary.