Falling in Love with Jesus

Do you believe in love at first sight?  The kind you read about in novels and see over and over in movies?   Two people meet and are bowled over—they realize immediately that they are drawn to each other, attracted to each other and yes, in love with each other. 

Long ago, I didn’t believe in it.  But the longer I live, and the more I hear people’s stories, the more I realize that love at first sight really exists.  Not all of us fall in love in such a sudden, dramatic way, but some people do.  There’s even a bestselling book that came out last year—Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, that cites scientific studies about the brain’s strange and wonderful ability to make instant decisions and judgments.  The author argues that it is this part of the brain that causes people to fall instantly in love.  He says people have as good a chance at staying together under those circumstances as when falling in love takes place more gradually.  And that makes sense because falling in love is only the beginning—staying in love over the long haul is something else again.

I bring up the subject of falling in love because it seems that when Jesus called out to Andrew and Simon, and then James and John, and they just got up and left everything behind to follow him—it was because they fell in love with him from the moment they saw him and heard his voice.  They were irresistibly attracted to something about him—something they perceived in an instant.  Was it his smile?  Was it the faith or integrity that shone out of him?  Perhaps they sensed his passion for justice, or the love and joy radiating from him.   Or maybe he was just the most alive person the world has ever seen. 

Whatever it was they saw that day by the shore of the Sea of Galilee, it was enough to make them drop their nets, leave their work behind and follow Jesus.

For some people, the spiritual journey is like that—a sudden and profound encounter with Jesus that changes their lives forever.  Others have a very different experience—they simply can’t remember a time when Jesus was not a part of their lives.  Still others come to love Jesus over a long period of time, on a path with many twists and turns and detours.  They stumble and grope their way along until one day, it dawns on them that they too are in love with Jesus, and committed to following him.

An old friend of mine who has been a Christian all her life called me a few days ago.  She reported that she has always loved Jesus with her head, but now, after a period of daily prayer, she has experienced him as near enough to love him with her heart.
Through prayer, she opened the door to her heart and allowed Jesus to come in.   Jesus is always very near us, ready to love us, inviting us to draw near to him, to love him in return.   We draw near through prayer, and also through the events and circumstances of our lives—the successes and failures, the blessings and losses, the deaths and resurrections.  And there are the people we meet—people who end up being messengers from God, whether they realize it or not.

Before I became a Christian, I was working in a legal aid office—there was a woman there about 10 years older than I whom I admired very much.  She was an oasis of calm amidst a lot of chaos—high caseloads, upset and angry clients, and a legal system that offers precious little justice to the poor.  She had some tough personal circumstances too—a son who was bipolar, the death of her father etc.  She grieved these things, but she had an inner peace that nothing could shake.  I realized after a while that it was her faith that made the difference.  She read her Bible at her desk for 30 minutes every morning, and prayed for all the lawyers, the clients, the judges and so on.  I wanted what she had—and when she invited me to go to a noonday service at the church across the street, I went.  Jesus was calling me to follow him through this woman. 

There is a restless desire in all of us, a sense that we are incomplete, a kind of insatiable longing for something we can’t name.  There is a great writer named Ronald Rolheiser, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate order, who has written a book called The Holy Longing (you’ll see it on the list of suggested books for Lent in the newsletter).  He says that what we do with that burning desire, which the Greeks called “eros,” is what defines our spirituality.  We can set our hearts on things that ultimately cannot satisfy, like money or success.  We can set our hearts on things that can destroy us—like drugs and alcohol or destructive relationships.  But in the end, only God can finally fulfill our longing.   As St. Augustine put it,  “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee."

Whatever we set our hearts on will affect our entire lives, just as it affected the lives of the first disciples.  It will affect our choices, the way we spend our time and money, the way we relate to other people—everything.  If we set our hearts on Jesus, we will begin to follow in his footsteps.  We will find our joy in inviting others to meet Jesus, to experience for themselves his love and his truth.  We will find ourselves feeling more alive than ever before.  If we keep following him, year after year, we may find that the shape of our lives has changed.  Things that we used to value may seem less important to us.  Maybe it will seem to our friends that we have left our nets behind—the things that used to preoccupy us don’t matter as much any more.  And we will ultimately be defined by the path we take, the long journey we make following Jesus.

Even though it is not given to all of us to fall in love at first sight, we can predispose ourselves to fall in love with Jesus.  We can set our hearts on him, commit ourselves to follow him, and open the door of our hearts to him through prayer.  He is just waiting for each of us—the invitation is wide open:  “Follow me.”

Pedro Arrupe, the former head of the Jesuit order put it this way: 

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, 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, who 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.