Real love happens when it refuses to depend on feelings

A common comment made by newly baptized adults months into their baptism is quite often that the wonderful and warm feelings which they experienced at the Easter Vigil Mass are no longer there.  Some even wish that they had that experience each time Mass is celebrated, to which I would silently say to myself “for your sake, I hope you will not”.  Am I being a killjoy?  On a certain level, perhaps.  But on another level, I am hoping that they will reach a certain maturity in love that shows itself beyond one’s feelings.

In a similar way, I have also been rather pointed in my wedding homilies, where, though I wish the couple the blessings of God, I have also mentioned that I hope the good feelings that make the couple feel so much in love during the honeymoon would end very soon, so that love that is not hinged only on good feelings and romance can begin to be lived out in their everyday lives.

Like many spiritual masters, I do strongly believe that love and prayer share something in common – both of them need a ‘ritual’, which becomes a solid container on which to build a rhythm that can be sustained in the long run.  There has to be a certain routine and ritual which we willingly enter into with little irregularity or unusualness and with a certain constancy. 

One of the main problems with us human beings is that we are easily distracted in our best efforts.  We tire easily, many of us are not automatically or spontaneously creative, and even if we are, we are not often operating on that high level simply because we do not have that sustained high energy all the time.  Our minds are just not wired that way.

Many years ago, I was privileged to visit a Trappist Monastery in Massachusetts in North America, and followed their work and prayer timetable for about a week.  Their whole 24-hour day was broken up into three 8-hour segments, one for work (and study), one for prayer, and one for sleep.  There was plenty of routine for monks to follow, and it was not hard to perceive that there was a rhythm and a  purpose in this rule.  Part of the reason this seemed to be so ‘rigid’ is because monks know that following a discipline calls for the living out of love beyond feelings, and the living a deep prayer life also requires of one to pray even when one does not feel like praying.  The routine and the rhythm thus helps to keep the monk grounded in his commitment for the Lord expressed in his commitment for life. 

It is when love is largely dependent on fleeting feelings that one begins to give all sorts of seemingly legitimate reasons for not loving when those feelings are no longer present nor as strong as when the commitment was first made.  Those of us in the Marriage Encounter movement have always said that love is a decision, and decisions cannot be dependent on merely feelings.  When love is a decision, it goes beyond feelings and beyond romantic ambience.  It becomes something that is based on our will, which should be much more solid than our feelings alone.  This is the living out of being true to one’s spouse “in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, all the days of one’s life”.  After all, there will be many days when one doesn't feel like being loving, when one doesn't feel very much like forgiving, and when one doesn't feel like sharing.  

There are many misconceptions regarding prayer, liturgy and yes, even love, which plague many a modern mind so used to being ‘relevant, engaged and entertained’.  But if prayer, like love, is to be lived out as it should, then it has to be something that is long term with certain rules that give us strong guidelines to follow.  If as persons we find it a great challenge to be engaging all the time, to be full of insights all the time, and to be interesting 24/7, we will slowly begin to realise with the advent of maturity, patience and mellowness of heart, that there is a virtue in routine and rhythm. 

Whenever I hear about the complaints coming from congregants that our Latin Rite’s celebration of the Eucharist is so staid and boring, compared to some of the newer ‘mega’ churches which will remain nameless, it pains me that I have not enough time to share with them the wisdom of consistency and routine in worship, which helps us all to be steadfast in the love of God in our daily routine of life.   When we forget that the basis and fundament of our celebration of the Eucharist is that of a divine sacrifice, we tend to make the mistake to think that it is the other 'feel good' factors that should make the Mass a 'solid' celebration, as some may wish to call it.  It was St John Paul II who once said "the mystery of the Eucharist is too great a gift to admit of ambiguities or reductions, above all when, 'stripped of its sacrificial meaning, it is celebrated as if it were simply a fraternal banquet."

How is love good when it is a routine?  How can it then be real?  Perhaps a personal example might explain it with some degree of clarity.  I have a dear aunt who is in a nursing home and who suffers from severe dementia, and doesn’t communicate with nor recognize her visitors.  When I was still healthy and strong before cancer came a-visiting, I would start my one off day a week from priestly duties each Thursday with a visit to the nursing home, and stay with her till her lunch time,  I did this with dogged regularity despite her not recognizing me.  What was more important was that I knew who she was, and that I recognized her for who she was.  I guess it was my living out of a decision to love and to be consistently routine in carrying this out. It was way beyond something that was based merely on feelings or emotion.  There was little chance of any deep conversation, nothing particularly cerebrally meaningful that could be seen with the eye, with little if any, emotional satisfaction.  But there was a connection which went beyond any of these, far more important than feelings can evoke.

Our celebration and dogged regularity at Sunday Eucharist and prayer needs this kind of routine as well, if only for the connection that it provides as well – where we give the chance for a divine connection made possible by the Divine Connecter who is God.