Written On Our Hearts

In late March, one of my favorite TV shows, “How I Met Your Mother”, wrapped up it’s 9 year run on CBS. The series finale, like most things of this world, came to an end, albeit with much fanfare and debate by it’s devoted fan base about how Ted Mosby finally met his true love under a yellow umbrella. Debating how the writers concluded the show is not my focus, nor will you find my opinion about it here; like most things of this world it is inconsequential. But as I watched the final episodes I found myself rewinding and replaying the following line, by protagonist Ted Mosby, from the second to last episode entitled “The End of the Aisle”. “Love doesn’t make sense. You can’t logic your way into or out of it. Love is totally nonsensical but we have to keep doing it or else we’re lost and love is dead and humanity should just pack it in… Because love is the best thing we do.” This quote from the show contains much truth. It reminds us that the perfect love of God runs deeper...

You know, I think the first Commandment doesn’t get enough attention. We find ways to gloss over this commandment as a “given” in our prayer life. Most Catholics I know, myself included say “I know that one...I am the Lord your God, you shall not make any graven image of me...yadda, yadda, yadda...good I’ve done that...now moving on to the more interesting things I’ve done or not done on the list of ten.” I mean after all, even if we wanted to do so, most of us don’t have enough precious metal laying around the house to make a molten calf. It is a pretty safe bet though that God didn’t deliver the first commandment to Moses and his chosen people with a “Seinfeld-esque” attitude, therefore we too shouldn’t approach it lackadaisically, but we at times can be lazy and fall into this trap. I think the issue is two fold. First, we believers take God’s love, power and grace for granted (I mean He is always present and knows everything...maybe if He wasn’t constantly hanging around with us we...