Let me ask you a question: What is the love of your life? It is not always an easy question to answer. We may think one thing occupies the throne of our hearts, only to discover that something else has quietly taken its place.

Perhaps a better question is this: Where do your time, energy, and attention most naturally flow? For what do you willingly sacrifice your comfort, your money, or your peace of mind? The answer to these questions often reveals what we truly love. 

For the truth is that the center of a person's life is rarely found in what he says is most important to him, but in what he consistently gives himself to. Our hours are like a compass; they point, often more honestly than our words, to the object of our deepest love. Fr. Joseph Whelan, a Jesuit priest from Maryland, once wrote what happens when we truly love something: “It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, whom you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.”

May I suggest making God the love of our lives? Nothing is more practical than finding God. At first hearing, such a statement sounds rather strange. We are accustomed to thinking of practical things as those that concern money, schedules, careers, and the thousand little arrangements by which we order our days. Yet the old Jesuit priest was right when he wrote, “What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.”

This is because man is not merely a creature that thinks; he is a creature that loves. Wherever the heart has gone, the rest of the person will eventually follow.

Tell me what a man loves, and I can tell you something of the shape of his life. The object of his affection will determine what gets him out of bed in the morning, what occupies his thoughts in the quiet hours, what causes him grief, and what fills him with joy. The lover of wealth sees the world through the eyes of profit. The lover of honor is forever concerned with reputation. The lover of pleasure spends his days chasing delights that vanish almost as soon as they are grasped.

“Fall in love… stay in love, and it will decide everything.” There is a profound truth hidden in those simple words. We are always being decided by our loves. The only real question is whether we shall give our hearts to things that perish or to the One who does not.

For we become, in the end, what we worship. And the great mercy of God is that He does not ask first for our accomplishments or our talents, but for our hearts. Once He possesses that, everything else slowly begins to find its proper place. And that, perhaps, is the secret of the saints. They were not extraordinary because they did extraordinary things. They simply loved the right thing most.

With all the said, listen again to the words of Jesus in the Gospel passage this Sunday, with fresh ears. We understand the reason why he says what he says on a deeper level: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” 

So again let me ask you, who is the love of your life?