Returning love for love promises life full of challenges, adventure
By Fr. Jarrod Lies
Do you know what I fear most? I fear a mediocre life. Mediocrity.
I fear the possibility that life’s difficulties assail me in such a way that I lose hope and joy, and settle for good enough. That is a real threat for all of us.
There’s an expression: “It’s the hope that kills you.”
It assumes that sincerely hoping for and setting your desire upon a particular outcome intensifies the sting of disappointment. The saying expresses a bleak despair in which it’s better not to hope than to see your hopes crushed. If you don’t hope, then you can’t be disappointed.
I cannot imagine living a hopeless life. I pray that never happens to me or you.
Yet life’s challenges confound us all. We live in a world that can assault us: weaknesses originating within ourselves, threats from outside ourselves, and sudden disappointment or difficulty from unexpected corners. Indeed, sometimes it does seem as if hope has betrayed us. We feel duped.
Jeremiah’s fire
The prophet Jeremiah captures well this sense of being confounded. His line in Jeremiah 20:7 is one of the most memorable in Scripture: “You duped me, O Lord, and I let myself be duped.”
His anger came from doing God’s will. God gave him a mission to preach his name, to speak his word and justice, and to call society to become more worshipful and caring. Yet Jeremiah received ridicule, mockery, rejection, and betrayal: “All the day I am an object of laughter; everyone mocks me.”
He set out on a path of passionate love of the Lord, but felt as though the Lord wasn’t supporting him. Jeremiah got so angry that he said, “I say to myself, I will not mention him. I will speak in his name no more.”
Rather than continuing his divine assignment, Jeremiah decided, “I’m just going to give up.” He was on the verge of settling for good enough. Yet when he tried not to care, Jeremiah 20:9 tells us his deepest self overruled such attempts: “But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.”
For all the ways in which the world had assaulted him, Jeremiah could not hold back the love of God and neighbor within his soul. The fire burning within him to speak the name, justice, and mercy of the Lord gave him the courage to encounter the world rather than avoid it.
We all face the same temptation. During a homily in Assisi, Pope Leo recently spoke to young people facing the temptation to hold back: “We have come here to overcome resignation and fear, to dispel the doubts that hold us back. … Jesus calls us to engage with his story.”
Jeremiah tried to resign from the story God had given him, but the fire within would not allow him to remain a spectator. God was still writing his story, and Jeremiah had to remain engaged in it, and so do we. This fire must burn in us if we are to avoid mediocrity.
Thirsting, burning heart
Psalm 63 says, “O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts. I have gazed toward you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory.” This beautiful psalm speaks to the contemplative core of the human heart. How passionate the heart is!
Even when our minds are confused, our hearts can still burn, even if the embers only smolder. As Pope Francis says in his encyclical Dilexit Nos: “The heart appears as the locus of desire and the place where important decisions take shape.” The heart is where our thirst becomes a decision: whether we will surrender to mediocrity or offer ourselves to something greater.
That desire must be protected and stoked so that we can engage the life God has set before us. I pray that this fire always burns brightly within, no matter what the world, the flesh, or the devil throw our way.
Jesus himself yearns for this when he says in the twelfth chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel, “I have come to set the Earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” This is the gospel passage printed on this year’s stewardship poster. At its center is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, burning with fire, pierced by a lance, and encircled by a crown of thorns. Above it are the words “Return Love for Love.”
Jesus is no pyromaniac, so what does it mean that he has come to set fire to the Earth?
He has come to ignite the interior part of the human person.
Sacred Heart again?
Some may ask why we chose the image of the Sacred Heart for a second straight year. First, Pope Francis anticipated what this image places before us in Dilexit Nos. He called the whole Church to rediscover the Sacred Heart, not as something sentimental or nostalgic, but as the living center of our relationship with Christ and the source of our mission in the world. I strongly recommend reading it.
Moreover, earlier this year, our country’s bishops consecrated the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus as our nation marked the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Our stewardship poster is therefore part of a larger movement in the Church. It asks us to allow the Heart of Christ to shape our personal devotion, families, parishes, communities, and nation.
Our fire begins in his heart. His heart burns with love for us, and that love sparks a fire within our own hearts. “Return Love for Love” means that the love of Christ calls forth a response. We do not create the fire. We receive it from him, allow it to take hold within us, and return his love through the gift of our lives. “Only through love do we become fully ourselves,” says Dilexit Nos, before it goes on to evoke the image of a “raging fire.” We do not need merely to know that Christ loves us. That knowledge must become affection, love, and self-gift. The fire of his heart must become the fire of ours.
Last year, we contemplated the love flowing from the Sacred Heart through us in love of God and neighbor. This year’s image moves that theme forward. Rather than focusing on love flowing from the wound in his heart, we focus on the fire of the Sacred Heart with the power to rekindle our own. It destroys mediocrity, enlightens our inner selves, and casts the gifts we have received forth to others. These gifts are not our possessions but acts of love to be shared in imitation of the divine love burning in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Love received, love returned.
Created to strive
The human spirit is created to strive. When there is no striving, mediocrity sets in. Preventing this requires us to learn the art of living. I frequently use a phrase that I believe is worth memorizing: God did not give us life so that he could live it for us. He gave us life so that we could live it with him.
During an address in Rimini, Pope Leo XIV echoed this, saying, “Love moves us, urges us on, awakens us from our slumber, inspires new vocations and calls us to take risks.”
Adventure! Engagement! Striving! Living! Life calls for perseverance, even in the face of difficulty. That’s what makes life an adventure.
Kids know this. No coach reaches out to potential players by promising, “You will never have to practice hard.” Adults know this. Military recruiters do not say, “If you want nothing out of life, join the military.” The human heart is not made for mediocrity but for fire!
John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart says the human heart desires:
• A battle to fight;
• An adventure to live; and
• A beauty to rescue.
Or as Pope Leo said during the Jubilee of Youth celebrations: “Aspire to great things, to holiness, wherever you are. Do not settle for less.”
No one reading this should settle for mediocrity. Aspire to great things, not somewhere else or in somebody else’s life, but wherever you are. Desire a heart fully consumed by the fire of self-gift!
Imagine a life with no battle, adventure, nor beauty, which lacks the quality of striving and offers no obstacles to overcome. How bland. Some may think they would prefer a life without challenges, but such stagnation prevents the human spirit from expanding beyond its present capabilities and stops it from the growth that comes from taking a difficult, but necessary, stand.
In such moments, as we experience all that stands against us, we become our greatest selves – even if we also suspect we have been duped.
If I recognize that today, I:
• May have to fight for something better;
• Can have an adventure that may be challenging, but still exciting; and
• Can rescue someone beautiful and make sure that person thrives in dignity
–then I wake up every day ready to burn with divinely-bestowed fire.
God has given us a share in this life, to stoke the flames of our interior desires, to strive, stretch, and work.
In Matthew 16:21, St. Peter struggled when he heard Jesus say that the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem, suffer greatly, be betrayed and murdered, and on the third day rise again. Confounded, Peter spoke with worldly wisdom: “No, no. Jesus, no. God forbid that happen to you.”
Jesus looked at him and said, “What are you saying? You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”
Peter voiced the worldly desire of a Christ without suffering, discipleship without a cross, and life that need not be offered. It seemed unimaginable that such a life could be fruitful.
The wisdom of the Sacred Heart does not separate the fire of Christ’s love from the wound in its side. The same heart burns, pierced and crowned with thorns. The fire does not mean that suffering has disappeared, nor do the piercing and thorns mean that love has been defeated. His heart remains aflame through it all.
That must challenge us. Whenever we avoid the cross, we avoid the passion and power that God has placed in the human heart.
Life lived well
Life lived well fears neither the cross nor the suffering associated with great accomplishments. Suffering expands our outer limits. Such a life sees the good things of this world, fights for them, and knows they’re worthy of the fight. The well-lived life recognizes the crosses we carry as not merely things that stand against us, but as experiences that allow us to savor the life God has given us.
This is the compassion at the root of stewardship. We do not wait until we have no suffering of our own before giving ourselves to others. We give from our substance, not merely from our surplus. Even in grief, fatigue, poverty, or disappointment, love can still turn outward. The love we receive from the heart of Christ becomes self-gift for another.
The whispers of the world are money, pleasure, power, and fame. The world surrounds us with voices that pull our hearts into mediocrity. As Jesus warned in Matthew 16:26: “What would it profit a person to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” How many famous people have come to tragic ends? How many people living in the lap of luxury suffer from anxiety or despair? What good would there be of becoming a billionaire – or trillionaire – and filling every material desire while failing to savor life given in self-gift?
The gift of time, talent, treasure, and trust moves us beyond ourselves. It is the overflow of a heart burning in unison with the Sacred Heart.
Perhaps reading this prompts you to suspect your current life lacks this divine fire. Do not pretend that life is elsewhere. We can think, “The context of my life can’t be adventurous, can’t be a battle, and doesn’t admit of beauty.” Life’s stress, heartbreaks, and low points can prompt one to think, “If only I were someone else. If only I were somewhere else.”
And yet, any place to which you go, you’ll also find yourself there. Context isn’t the problem, expectation is.
To put it clearly: the context of your life as it is right now is where the fire of Christ will be rekindled and burn brightly within you. The adventure, battle, and beauty are found in the life you now live, every day admitting of something greater, something more, something possible.
Before you today
Ask yourself:
• What today is the battle you have to overcome, whether your own human weaknesses or the things you have to deal with?
• What today is the adventure set before you: the problems you didn’t want to handle or the unexpected curveballs in your life? Can you look at them not merely as something standing in your way, but sources of growth?
• What today is the great beauty God has placed before you, the good things that drive your heart: the love of God, neighbor, and family; the friends you have; and the work before you?
Are you living a mediocre, bland life? Or are you living according to the passion of the human spirit, through love of God and neighbor, in this great adventure God has placed before you?
We must have the courage to let our hearts desire, to allow our hopes to be lifted, and to achieve beyond our perceived limits, because the God who is infinite gives us infinite possibilities.
I hope you, like me, can say, “I fear a mediocre life. I fear allowing the world to win. I fear seeing hope as something that can dash my heart rather than expand it.”
Christ hasn’t called us to that life.
His Sacred Heart burns with a flame, pierced by a lance and crowned with thorns. If I’m going to be a disciple, my heart will look like that: pierced and crowned, bleeding and open, yet on fire.
This is the heart that first loved us. This heart asks us to return love for love.
Is your life on fire?
If not, ask the Lord to set your heart right for the battle to fight, the adventure to live, and the beauty to rescue.
May we never acquiesce to a mediocre life!
Fr. Jarrod Lies is Vicar for Evangelization, Discipleship, and Stewardship in the Diocese of Wichita.
