The Ultimate Epiphany: Celebrating the Greatest Love Story Ever Told

I devoured romance stories as a young girl. In these novels, these perfect examples of manhood always found the heroine exciting. He would do anything at all that it took to claim her for his own, no matter how ridiculous or extraordinary. He saw her as worth whatever price he needed to pay in order to claim her love for his own.

I wanted someone to love me that way. I wanted them to see me as a prize worthy of doing whatever it took to claim.

When Fantasy Met Reality

Those romance novels shaped my expectations for romantic love. I looked for excitement, passion, and physical connection as the hallmarks of love. I didn’t realize how much deeper love goes than those things.

The picture painted in romance novels applies more accurately to the things we experience during infatuation. Infatuation never lasts beyond the first hiccup in the road, when the fantasy of what you imagine love to be encounters the human reality of your partner.

The man God chose for me does not fit a romance novel’s definition of perfect manhood, but he remains the perfect man to help me become the woman of God I desire to be. In the beginning of our relationship, I found his imperfections an unwanted surprise. I worried I’d misunderstood God when He presented my husband as being the one for me.

My husband matched few of the superficial qualities I’d written down on my list of things I wanted in a partner. He didn’t love the things I loved or see things the way I saw them. The qualities he possessed, though, offered me greater long-term value. He challenged me to grow in ways I never imagined growing and broadened my horizons, helping me to see life in perspectives I didn’t know existed before he came along.

The Imperfections of Human Love

When my husband and I got together, I latched onto him with everything in me. I expected him to fulfill all of my needs for love. I didn’t realize what a heavy burden we place on another’s shoulders when we give them the weight of such lofty expectations.

He could not meet my expectations, and the bitter disappointment that came from my own false expectations caused rifts in the relationship. I blamed him for the failures but the expectations didn’t belong to him. He’d never promised to be able to do what I expected him to do for me. I’d set both of us up for failure without realizing it.

The pain of recognizing that human love could not satisfy my need for love drove me to search for a source that could fulfill it. I turned to God but stumbled over Scripture.

The Questions Reading Scripture Raised

How could a God who promised unconditional love also be the same God who destroyed a planet filled with people, saving only 8 souls?

How could the God who promised mercy without end be the same God who ordered the death of all the first-born males born in Egypt? Or the complete destruction of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, or Amalekites? How could a God who loves us unconditionally send us to Hell if we didn’t obey Him?

These stumbling blocks led to me doubting that God’s perfect love could be trusted. What if I fell? What if I failed to be perfect? Would He shun me or seek my destruction?

Add to that the apparent contradictions between science and history’s version of man’s creation with the story the Bible told about man’s creation and I allowed my doubts to take the lead. I walked away from the Catholic Church.

Finding Answers and Building Faith

In my quest for answers, I came to a group that provided them. The Apostolate for Family Consecration began to feed me, a little at a time, answers that made sense about why the Catholic Church does what it does and how that helps us to live lives of authentic love.

It took years, though, before I could reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament to create a coherent image. The God of the Old Testament is the Father of a child as it grows up. Israel, from its first conception in the promise made to Abraham, to its pre-teen years after the fall of Babylon the Great.

God of the New Testament enters our world as a groom ready to claim His bride. He sees how she grows and He invites this child He’s raised up to become a partner with Him in sharing His love with the rest of humanity. He bestows on her all the gifts she needs to complete her mission and to do the work He created her to do. Then, He sends her out to the rest of the world and urges her to invite those who don’t know Him to “Taste and see the Goodness of the Lord.”

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

Today, I read Scripture and I see in its pages the greatest love story ever told. It sells more copies per year than any other book, and endures from age to age no matter what tragedies befall humanity.

The Bible contains within its pages the story of God’s unfailing love for humanity and His continued pursuit of our love even when we reject Him time and time again.

Act I: Choosing to Save Humanity from Itself

When our first parents rejected His call to love and chose to eat the fruit of knowledge of Good and Evil instead, He didn’t kill them. He warned them about the consequences that would come and then took time to sew them clothes, sending an angel to teach them and guard them in the wilderness.

In the story of Noah’s Flood, we see that at a time when almost everyone on the planet rejected and refused love, God reached down to make sure that human love survived the onslaught of evil. He did this by preserving the one family who still knew how to love one another and eliminating the people who threatened them with harm.

He didn’t give up on humanity or quit trying to teach them to love another. He simply eliminated all those He knew whose hardened hearts stood opposed to love.

Many generations later, he chose a man with a barren wife to be the founder of a nation built on His laws of love. He promised that man would become a worldwide blessing to all people because through Abraham and Abraham’s descendants, He would show the world the way to love one another as He loved them.

That barren wife, Sarah, conceived Issac who gave birth to Jacob, whom God renamed to Israel. From Isaac came Jacob, whom God renamed to Israel, and from Jacob came the 12 tribes of Israel.

When bigger nations rejected this tiny nation and its laws of love and insisted on continuing their war against love, God intervened on behalf of the Children of Israel to protect them as His Chosen People, the people chosen to carry His message of love to all the world. When they enslaved themselves for food, He reached down to free them from those who oppressed them.

All throughout Scripture, He eliminated every threat to ensure their survival, showing the world His great love for those who followed Him. First, He sent them the law to guide them in how to love one another, then He sent prophets so that they could hear from His lips how He wanted them to live out this call to love. They destroyed every prophet He sent because their hearts rejected the message carried by the prophets.

Act II: Love Enters the Story in Flesh and Blood

When neither of those got through, He at last poured himself into the body of a human woman, named Mary, allowing Himself to be fully united to her. In her body, this perfect union of divinity and humanity – a physical expression of God’s undying hope in the goodness of humanity - grew into a baby that brought the heads of foreign nations to the little town of Bethlehem to offer Him gifts.

That baby grew into a man named Jesus Christ, who showed all of humanity the way to love, the truth about what it takes to love, and whose willingness to love all the way to His very last breath, allowing humanity to put him to death on a cross to save humanity gave us a perfect example of what it means to live life for the sake of love.

Act III: The Resurrection, the Vision, and the Invitation

Jesus rose from the grave and conquered death, proving that love triumphs over death, and He issued an invitation to all of humanity: “Come, follow Me.” In the remainder of the New Testament we watch as love begins to spread through the Holy Spirit from town to town. Each place where hearts are touched with love becomes alive and vibrant, filled with joy even in the midst of pain and sorrow.

That book ends with a promise that love will triumph over evil in the end and a question for the reader: Which side of the battle for the human heart do you wish to be on? The side of love and the life it brings? Or the side that rejects love and chooses death instead? The choice is ours to make.

The Epiphany: An Encounter with Love Made Flesh

Three wisemen see an unfamiliar star appear on the horizon around March 25th, in the year 1 B.C. These wisemen travel a long distance from the East to reach Jerusalem. The Biblical scholars at Herod’s palace point these wise men toward the tiny town of Bethlehem.

They travel there to find the infant Jesus, Love Made Flesh. Every plan they made for their future no longer mattered. The encounter radically alters their lives and the direction they take going home.

That’s what love does for all of us. It radically alters us. We may return to the home where we once lived, but we can’t return using the same path we took the first time. We’ve changed, and because of it so does the way we view the world.

My Invitation To You

If you’re not happy with your life the way it is and you’re ready for an encounter with the perfect love that’s waiting for you in Jesus Christ, I’d love to facilitate that connection. No matter where you are in life, my goal is to meet you there and walk with you to where you want to be.

Whether you:

·         Left the Catholic faith because you think you know what it is and you were disappointed or disillusioned with what you met

·         Are an atheist who thinks religion is the opiate of the masses, has no relevance to modern life, and is simply a tool for thought control

·         Grew up in another faith and don’t know much about the Catholic Church except what you’ve heard…and most of what you’ve heard is negative

·         Are already Catholic and love it but struggle to share what you love so much about it with other people

You’ll find something in this for you. Sign up using the link below and I’ll send you an email each day on an aspect of the Catholic faith, sharing my story and inviting you to share your experiences. You are welcome to ask any questions about the content. I’ll be happy to give you the answers you need.

http://tinyurl.com/Loving-Catholicism-Signup