Hearts Made For Love

Welcome!!!

I thought for my first post that I would explain the name of this blog!

It's funny how certain moments stick in your mind; I remember it as if it was yesterday: it all began on a seemingly ordinary evening in my senior year of high school. I'd just come from a volleyball game and was late for the meeting that would turn out to be the beginning of a life-changing journey for me. You see the meeting was for a trip that would change my life: World Youth Day - a pilgrimage I would make a year and a half later to gather in Poland with millions of other Catholic, young people from around the globe. At the time, I only signed up because all my friends were going and it seemed like a cool way to see more of the world, but I would later realize that I was called to Poland for a very particular reason.

Fast forward a year and a half and there I was standing on Polish soil, one of about 2 million young people who had journeyed from all around the world to be there. It was all around a crazy and powerful experience. The joy and exuberance of all the young people flooding the city of Krakow was both inspiring and contagious. My experience of World Youth Day was not at all what I expected; when they tell you it's a pilgrimage they really mean it. We walked for hours in the blazing heat, slept in a field under the stars, and walked through a thunderstorm back to our hostel after it was all over. But despite all that, it was still good; it changed me because after that event I knew that it was real, that this whole thing called the Catholic faith was real and true: for the joy and peace I felt was tangible, being in that field surrounded by my friends and millions of other people who were there for the very same reason I was - to be a witness, to be a light in a world of darkness.

World Youth Day 2016 in Krakow, Poland.

One of the things that struck me the most was the Polish people's openness and devotion to the Catholic faith and our Lord Jesus Christ. In particular, my interest was sparked by their special devotion to St. Maria Faustina, a Polish nun of the 20th century whose mission was to proclaim Jesus' message of mercy to the whole world (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska).

When I got home I went out and bought her diary to see what all the fuss was about. It's 700+ pages long so I still haven't finished it, but from the beginning I was enraptured by the message of love and mercy which she gave. In paragraph 140 she says, " [pure love] knows that only one thing is needed to please God: to do even the smallest things out of great love - love, and always love." I was struck down by the last part... love, and always love... always love, that means I have to love all the time, when I'm tired, or mad, or more likely hangry.

I pondered this for a while. Of course I knew the whole “love everyone” thing, but I'd never really thought about why we are called to love always. Inspired by St. Augustine's famous quote which tells us that our hearts are made for God, I realized that since God is love then it follows that our hearts are literally made for love and to love. (Note: I may have had some help in figuring this all out from a friend or youth ministry night but I can't remember, so shout out if you helped me realize this!)

A great deal of my outlook on life, and how it should be lived, revolves around the idea that we must live lives of love; we must love with everything that we do. This idea that our hearts are made for love is what makes this conviction so relevant. Our hearts are literally made to love and be loved and it is only when we love and experience love that our hearts are truly satisfied.

Before World Youth Day I was coming to the conclusion that the answer to everything is love. After World Youth Day I learned why: our hearts are made for love.