Yes. I'm Still In Love

 Yes. We're Still in Love

5 September 2014

      Hello My Friend! I found a beautiful picture of my wife the other day and I posted it to Facebook. I want everyone to know how beautiful she is. I also posted the caption "Yes. I'm still in Love!" After posting I sat back and decided it was time to return to talking about where I am with my Catholic Faith. If we don't think about these things they have a tendency to slip to non-priority. In the past few weeks I've been missing mass and that usually sends me down the guilt-path. When I converted to The Church I made a promise to love, honor, and obey the Teachings. Lately I've been lax in loving, and lax in honoring. I'm not happy right now with the changes in the liturgical verbiage. I've talked to other Catholics who are in the same boat. The central meaning  is still there, but being a Convert it took me a while to learn and properly recite all the old parts of the liturgy, and now I have to re-learn certain key parts of the newly re-arranged prayers. Just one more thing to cause me to take umbrage with the authorities! But in the end it's such a piddling matter to get angry over. Yes, I'm still in love. I'm in love with my wife and I've promised to love Christ's teachings. And I've promised to accept and honor the love that's being offered to me each time I take the Eucharist during mass. There have been any number of times in my short career as a Catholic that I've been struck to the core as a Convert to the Church. Father Dan Mode told me in a private conversation two years ago that the central teaching of  Christ and the central teaching of  the Church has everything to do with saying "Yes." The second teaching is this: Christ came into the world to direct each of us toward an understanding of God's unconditional love for each of us. I'm simply a human male married to a wonderful woman who bore our son, but beyond that she gave me riches I could have never imagined when I was a young, stupid, unmarried male. I may have never become a Catholic (a very happy one - you need to understand that) without her constant, loving help. Without her, I may have never understood the connection between my telling her how much I love her, and at the same time expressing those same words each time I take Communion with Christ and my Church. It's the "Yes" that Father Mode was talking about. It's all a big mystery as one favorite priest once told me. Life is a lot more fun when you find the joy in it instead of any sorrow. My complaints are meaningless and piddling in comparison to God's Great Plan for each of our lives. I'm still in love with Connie and that's such an easy choice. So much easier if  I  realize that my marriage is a sacramental gift I received when I made my final decision to convert to Catholicism.  +