THE REAL THING

"I understand so well that it is only love which makes us pleasing to God, that this love is the only good for which I strive."

- Saint Therese of the Child Jesus

Most of us, especially the young, have a problem understanding the true meaning of the word "love." We know the same word is applied to the most degraded act of lust as well as to the highest form of charity. It's not enough to blame the Englsh language for not making the distinction between eros and agape, as the Greeks did. There is something deeper and more fundamental than this at the root of the misunderstanding. The diverse use of the word is only part of the problem.

Today, perhaps more than ever before, there is a failure to distinguish between the true and the false. The inabilty to recognize truth from falsehood, the real from the unreal, is a fundamental problem of our society where so much of what we see and know and feel is not the real thing.

Saint Therese grasped the true meaning of the word "love" because of her insistence on cutting out everything in her life that was not true to God's word, as she sought to know it. Her burning desire for God and her single-minded purpose in following him led to her discovery of the true meaning of the word. It also gave her the inner strength to spend her whole life in pursuit of it.

Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Community, OCDS - Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites, Hudson, NH