In our message series, Tough Love, we're exploring what love really looks like, not what love looks like in our dreams or imaginations, but what love really means and requires of us. We're working to understand love not as something we feel, but as something we do. Love is a verb, not a noun, and that means we've got to take action. (If you missed this week's message, you can watch it here.) This week's challenge is to put our love into action in some big or small way through doing good deeds. What's your good deed this week? What's something you wouldn't normally do, but will do out of a commitment to grow in love during this series? Maybe it's something for a friend or neighbor. Maybe it's a good deed for the person you've identified as your "tough to love" person. 

No matter what it is, we invite you to share your good deed below, for two reasons:

1. If you've already done your good deed, sharing it is a great way to spread that light, to inspire and encourage others working to grow in love.
2. If you haven't done your good deed yet, writing it down will help you choose the specific good deed you're going to do this week and increase your commitment to doing it!

Share your good deed by commenting below. Feel free to post anonymously if you prefer (enter "Anon" in the Name field; Email and Website can be left blank). If sharing at all feels way outside your comfort zone, you're on the right track. Discipleship is all about growth and growth only happens when we're outside our comfort zones. Thanks for spreading and sharing light!

​At some level, we all know this, but maybe it’s not something we’ve thought about much: relationships are so important to our happiness that the quality of our relationships affects our quality of life. This is especially true of relationships with the people we love the most and spend the most time with. If we want to have better lives, one of the surest ways to do this is to work to improve the quality of even one or two of our most important relationships. This week we’ve been looking at St. Paul’s advice on love and relationships, which comes down to one simple principle: focus on what you can do, what you can control--take responsibility for what depends on you in the relationship. If we want a relationship to get better, we need to stop thinking about what the other person should or shouldn’t have said, about how they should change, about what they should do differently. Love doesn’t keep lists of all the ways I’ve been wronged, all the times the other person hurt me. Love doesn’t rush to point out the other person’s faults. Instead of brooding over injuries and keeping lists, instead of seeking its own interests and protecting itself, love tries to find ways to give more. Our relationships get better when we stop trying to change them, and start trying to change us.

If you want to take a next step with this week’s message, here are three ideas:

1. Think about one relationship that makes your life better. What do you value and appreciate about that person and that relationship?
   
2. Think about one relationship in your life that’s difficult right now. What is one thing you can do this week to take responsibility for what depends on you in the relationship?
   
3. Think about a relationship where you wish the other person would do something differently--put more effort in, be more grateful, etc. Then, instead of asking or telling the other person to change, try to make that change in you instead.

I remember quite clearly the feeling of sadness and dismay I felt as a little girl when I heard in the Gospel: “There was no room for them in the inn.”  (I wouldn’t have known the word dismay; but, I surely knew the feeling of “How can this be?”)  Really!  How could this be?  This was no ordinary traveling couple.  Clearly, Mary was expectant and due to deliver any minute.  Wasn’t there some small corner in the innkeeper’s house where Mary and Joseph could spend the night?

The feeling of dismay returned last week: when reading the Boston Globe, I learned the city of Boston leads the twenty-five largest cities in the United States in the number of homeless persons.  How can this be?

Perhaps the answer to the question is there was no room in the inn because there was no room in the innkeeper’s heart.  And, there is no room in shelters or permanent housing because there’s not enough room in my heart to work for solutions to homelessness.  It is not my intention to demonize the innkeeper or myself or anyone else; but rather, to search for the impediments that keep me and others from seeking and supporting the solutions to enormous problems that afflict our brothers and sisters.  

What gets in the way?  There are many things that impede us:

• the enormity of the problems
  
• the staggering number of affected people; mostly unknown to us; they don’t have a face
  
• the busyness of our lives
  
• the complexity of issues
  
• being overwhelmed by the tasks
  

One of the first things that we need to acknowledge is that we can’t do it all.  No one can.  But we can do something, and as the mission statement of the Social Justice Ministry states:

As disciples of Christ, we have a responsibility to respect the dignity of all people, to work to secure everyone’s rights and to work for a more just and peaceful society and world.  We undertake this mission through prayer, worship, education and action, for love of our neighbor is our love of our Lord.

As in so many things we do, prayer is a critically important dimension to our work of justice.  We might find ourselves asking God to expand our hearts to make room for the plight of our brothers and sisters.  We may ask God: What would you have me do?  We may ask for wisdom and understanding and insight as to how to proceed.

Last month, we heard the Gospel from Matthew 25:  “Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you something to eat…”  Jesus replied: “Whenever you did it for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it for me.”  Clearly the Social Justice Ministry’s statement, “love of our neighbor is our love of our Lord,” is rooted in Matthew 25.

Advent is nearly over.  And, anticipating the Christmas readings got me thinking about making room in my heart for Christ and for the body of Christ.  That body is made up of all sorts of people: rich and poor, educated and illiterate, healthy and feeble, powerful and marginalized.  All God’s people are our neighbors and deserve to be treated with respect.   Is there room in my heart for them?  

~Sr. Kathleen

Take Your Next Step: In a time of prayerful honesty, ask yourself: Is there anyone or any group of people that I exclude from my heart?  Ask God to make room in your heart for them.

What does it really mean to be disciples of Christ, and what motivates us to try? How do we live out the call to discipleship? Once we have embraced discipleship, what moves us to take the next step and become evangelizers? Without a doubt, we can benefit from asking these questions of ourselves now and again to test whether we have truly made inroads in our lifelong journey of faith.
We would do well to reflect on the fact that our starting point is that we have been loved by God first, and that experience of being loved unconditionally and without qualifying merit impels us to love in return. The gratuitous nature of God’s love for us is overwhelming, humbling, and motivating. God’s love, if we truly take it to heart, believe it, and live in the grace, the pure gift that it is, will transform us. That transformation will determine the choices we make in our lives.

Pope Francis, in his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel, speaks of the challenge which the Gospel imposes on us and the consequences that flow from embracing it:
“The Gospel tells us constantly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with others, with their physical presence which challenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and continuous interaction. True faith in the incarnate Son of God is inseparable from self-giving, from membership in community, from service, from reconciliation with others. The Son of God, by becoming flesh, summoned us to the revolution of tenderness.” (#88)

These words of Pope Francis hit home as they tell us not to insulate ourselves from our brothers and sisters, from their needs and brokenness. We cannot separate ourselves from becoming involved with them as individuals or as part of a community. The tenderness that God has extended to us, we in turn, must offer to others. For some of us, our next step in becoming disciples might mean that we do not avert our eyes from the beggar in the street; but rather, we recognize his dignity as a person by acknowledging his presence. For others, our deepening discipleship may involve our willingness to serve meals at a soup kitchen. For still others, the commitment to discipleship may be
recognized in concerted efforts to increase the numbers of transitional housing units available to homeless families.

Pope Francis tells us: “Being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus to others, and this can happen unexpectedly and in any place: on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey.” This means we can’t compartmentalize our life of faith and our daily lives. Our faith and the love that God extends to others through us must penetrate all aspects of our lives. The opportunities to bring the love of Christ to others are all around us. We only need to open our eyes to see them, our hearts to be moved by them, and then, direct our actions to respond to them. When asked why we do the things that we do, we can respond in an evangelizing manner in the words of Sr. Kathy Sherman (who has written a song with this title): “Because we love God.”

~Sr. Kathleen

Take Your Next Step: 
In the coming week, take notice of the poor who live in our midst, and in a time of prayer, ask God: What would you have me do? How do you want me to respond to this person’s need?