Love, Destiny, and Personal Growth

Michiel Peeters - The Bible readings you have chosen speak explicitly about love: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.Love never fails.”

So it’s a great thing, this love, to have this love, to experience this love! But what kind of event is it? What happens when you fall in love?

When you surprise yourself loving, to your own wonder you realize that you have run into an unforeseen presence that is good for you, that wakes you up, that makes you alive, that awakens your humanity, that causes you to thrive. You feel, as before, perhaps only in your early childhood, that you are made for great things, to be happy, for a great destiny, and this person has to do with it, with these things, with this happiness, with something great you feel again you are destined for!

To love means to realize, full of emotion, that you are in the presence of someone who has to do with your destiny! That is why you are so happy with that person, so grateful for that person, so moved by that person!

So moved that you even dare to take big steps, perhaps to your own surprise.

You have already experienced this, with all this amazement at someone so different from yourself, from a country so far away, from a culture so different. Everything seemed new and interesting, and even ordinary everyday things got more alive because of this presence. All this moved you so much that you even decided to settle far from home, in a strange environment, and to get married, to be open to children.

Then the question becomes: how can we hold on to this love? How can we remain so happy and grateful for this person? In good and bad days, in sickness and health? For even “if I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.” All my bravado is nothing compared to love, so how can I not lose the experience of love?

If we do not want to lose the love we have experienced, it is necessary not to change the method by which it came into being, nor to break off halfway the road to which the event of love invites us.

How was love born? By running into a presence and being “grasped” by its exceptionality.

But in order to be grasped and moved by a presence, I need to look at that presence. Running into it is a pure event—it either happens or it doesn’t—but that I then stand still and look at it, so that it can touch me, grasp me, move me, that is in the hands of my freedom. To look properly, we need to make time but also space, take a few steps back and allow such questions to arise as: who are you really? And what do you awaken in me?

I sincerely hope you will do that in your life: regularly take a few steps back to look at the other. Likewise, with your children if God wants to give them to you, so that you can marvel at the mystery of the other's presence.

Next, we should not break off halfway the path to which the experience of love invites us. That moved amazement becomes love when I realize that this presence has to do with my destiny. How then? First, by awakening my entire desire, a desire for happiness. Then, by speaking of my destiny: for that person did not make herself, we are not the ones who made us meet, and I am not the one who can save that person—and myself—for eternity. That person speaks of the Mystery because she herself is given by the Mystery and because she has managed to awaken all of my infinite desire that can be quenched only by something Infinite.

This is an important point, because if the presence of the other does not lead me to the Mystery—which it does, if I do not break off the road to which it invites me—then I am going to demand from the other what she cannot give: to be my happiness, instead of being a privileged sign of my happiness, companion on my way to destiny. God, the Mystery, is a necessary implication of our experience, not because of our religious education, but because of the dynamics of life. The Mystery is the only adequate horizon within which one can continue to love.

So, love is a great thing and must be treated accordingly, with attention and care, responding to its invitation.

It would be great to receive some help with this, not from people who tell you what to do but who themselves experience great love and are therefore enviably attractive, interesting, and helpful for your own path.

We are here in a church because God has become a man, the Mystery has become a human company, which has said: “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love…. Love one another as I love you.” It was the incredible, but real, present experience of a great love.

This “incredible, but real, present experience of a great love” has continued throughout history, constantly grasping new people, making them presences in their environment.

For your path together, B. and M., I wish you this kind of friend.
Unrevised notes and translation by the author. Homily by Fr Michiel Peeters, Tilburg University Chaplaincy
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