“And the greatest of these is love”.  This was a verse from the second reading of our wedding and most likely it was the second verse from your wedding too.  This verse comes from 1 Corinthians 13:13 when St. Paul explains that “Love never fails” and love is the greatest gift God gives us.

Recently, I came across a recent blog post by Fr. Robert Barron’s website, WordonFire.org titled “Sex, Love, and God: The Catholic Answer to Puritanism and Nietzcheanism”.  Fr. Barron starts off describing the shift in sexual morality in today’s society indicating that it is clearly declining and begins referencing the Book of Genesis and that God created us to love and be loved.  Think about it for a second.  Think about all the people you love and those that love you.  As humans it is engrained in our DNA to want to be loved and to love another.  No gift in the world and no other feeling can top the feeling of love.  So as I read Fr. Barron’s article I had to stop and reflect on how God’s gift of “love” is truly the greatest gift of all.

So how come love gets ignored in many sexual relationships?  Fr. Barron explains it as “The goodness of sexual desire is designed, by its very nature, to become ingredient in a program of self-forgetting love and hence to become something rare and life enhancing.  If you want to see what happens when this principle is ignored, take a long hard look at the hookup culture prevalent among many young — and not so young — people today. Sex as mere recreation, as contact sport, as a source only of superficial pleasure has produced armies of the desperately sad and anxious, many who have no idea that it is precisely their errant sexuality that has produced such deleterious effects in them. When sexual pleasure is drawn out of itself by the magnetic attraction of love, it is rescued from self-preoccupation.”

If we ignore the greatest gift given to us by God and only strive to “feel good” then we are truly missing out on something so wonderful that no one can describe.  So I hope you enjoyed Fr. Barron’s article and I hope you stop for a moment and experience the chills or goose bumps of being loved and loving.

God Bless.