What's Love?

 Today is the feast day of a strong and wild Hungarian Queen who became a saint. A girlfriend of mine in Seattle just reminded me of her feast day (Thank you, Renia!), this woman Elizabeth of Hungary, gave up everything she had out of love for Jesus in the face of the poor. 

St Elizabeth of Hungary lay down her crown at the entrance of the church, only God is King, was her thought. 

In her life, she lived passionately each day out of the love of her whole heart for the man of her dreams, Jesus. I look at her life, and the meaning of love and ask myself, "What is love?"

When I was a freshman in college, one of my favorite songs was by Ashanti, Fat Joe and Ja Rule (don't judge) called "What's love got to do with it?" I vividly recall speeding down the smooth South Carolina race track, that flat 1/4 mile and cheers of the crowd in my veins in a 1998 Ford Mustang with the music pumping and feeling on top of the world with adrenaline rushing as I focused on the gears, as freshman in college is prone to do, not thinking of the consequences of going 160 mph. The moment that the motor had NOS injected by a button made the motor exhilarate and fly faster. To me, getting the Mustang to go faster was a form of love. I loved the "Stang", I risked my life in that Mustang, no doubt with my daddy shaking his head from a distance and crying over having taught me a darn thing about cars. My daddy, a man of many talents, was known to take me to the car shop to teach his little girl the ins and outs about cars, it was our time together. He had no idea I would soon love learning more about the mechanics of vehicles, (also how to bake, there are mechanics and science there too!) So no doubt, I associated my love for cars and mechanics with my love of my dad. (Thanks, Moose)

I have often thought at Holy Mass that each of us has an altar of love in our heart, which in many cases is not the Eucharist. There is something that we love so much we sacrifice everything for. It can be reputation, and what we hope people think of us. This love of reputation can lead us to sacrifice everything else for the altar of love of reputation: our language, our dress, our actions, our friends, but beneath the surface, is it a worthy altar? Is it love? Another "love" we can have is power, wanting people to know we are the cream of the crop and there is no one more unique than "me", and not one human more expert than "me", the queen bee of "you name it" is right here look no further, you have found the best. This sacrifice to be the best can come at such a cost to the people around us in our family. Even in the realm of religion and faith. How many married women do I know will spend hours in prayer, in adoration, in mass and their husbands are ignored, the relationship grown cold (or freezing) but the husband can't say a thing because it's faith. I could go on and on. The moment the Nitrous Oxide hits any motor, even a John Deer truck, that motor is going to haul at full speed. Another "love" can be a person and doing everything for that one human being to the point of not having anything left to give yourself or others.

So what is love? I look at the crucifix seeing Jesus hang, nailed to death and I know that He is pure love. He is fully sacrificing Himself for us in that total act of love for our souls. While we can't in any way compare to the love of Jesus, I do think that one thing that love is is knowing that we are too weak to be the top, the max, and push ourselves in perfectionism to reach our ultimate self when the reality is only He is Love because only He is capable of being Love. He said, "God is Love."

Knowing that we have problems and knowing that we are so incredibly weak that only He can help us get through our human frailty is part of what love is. Because love is about not only giving, and giving and giving... but being able to receive the perfect love that only perfection can give, only Jesus can give. How hard it is to hug someone that can't hug back? How sad it is to sacrifice your time, energy and talents for the good of someone and they barely acknowledge your existence? In that same way, Jesus was rejected and still loved. So love, today, on the feast of a queen lady, is about giving it all up for the sake of love of Him. Recognizing how very poor we are in the face of true Divine Love. We are incapable of doing anything without Him. We are even incapable of love if we don't accept His love first. 

On that note... Alexa, play "What's Love Got To Do with It?" for the memory of the days in the Mustang. (Daddy, it's ok... I only bake now, another trade you taught me and trick like adding a drop of honey in my yeast.)