Drink Deeply

Rediscovering the day we fell in love with God

10/31/2023

Mt 22:34-40 When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the law tested him by asking, "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

Jesus teaches us the greatest commandment in the gospel today: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind.” So, let me ask you today: when did you first fall in love with God, and start loving him? Now, why is that first falling in love so important? Well, just like married couples should go back to the day they first met and fell in love – have you ever taken that walk down memory lane? – so, too Christians should return to the day we first met and fell in love with God.

In other words, that original encounter with God – when our eyes met across a crowded room – carries all the love that will later spill out from our hearts to his, and from his heart to us, like the first sentence of a great novel always contains the whole novel in a nutshell. Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick opens with the memorable line, “Call me Ishmael.” That small sentence is the whole book in three words.

May I share with you when I first fell in love with God, and perhaps it will jog your memory of how and when that magical moment happened for you. God actually reached out and touched me through a traumatic event when I was seven years old and living in New Delhi, India. That is where I was born and raised “as you can tell from my very thick Indian accent.”

I loved my young life in New Delhi: sitting in a balcony seat in a movie theater down the street from my house; eating spicy Indian food every day; riding on the back of my uncle’s motorcycle and dodging the sacred cows in the middle of the street, and fluently speaking three languages: English, Hindi, and Malayalam. My life was great, but suddenly in 1976 it was all taken away. How so?

My family moved to another country where I knew no one, attended school with stranger little kids who did not look like or talk like me, where I could not find decent spicy food. I did not enjoy the meals, or music or movies; and movie theaters do not have balcony seats here! I felt like I had lost everything I loved or cared about.

I began to see this seven year old trauma repeating itself through life: we keep losing the people and things we love, and ultimately we lose our own bodies in death. At the same time, however, it hit me like a revelation of light in that darkness and despair, like St. Paul being knocked off his horse on the road to Damascus by a blinding flash of light. I discovered there is one Thing I can never lose, namely, God.

That is, the same God who had been the source of my joys in India would sustain me through all my new adventures in America. In fact, a Hindu friend gave my father the same advice before we left. He said: “The same God whom you worship here in India is the same God who will be with you in America.” In other words, in 1976 I first fell in love with God, the God who would never leave me, even when I would lose everything else.

And I have gone back to that first experience like a deep well and drawn out much water of grace, like the Samaritan woman who fell in love with Jesus at a well. Do you remember what Jesus promised her? He said: I will give you living water that would be “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14). Let me share with you when I took an especially deep drink from that well of God’s love that I discovered back in 1976.

I was 17 years old and thinking about becoming a priest. Like most people, I wanted to help others, but I wanted to help people in the best and most permanent way possible. It occurred to me – this is the well water now – that I could help people in two ways. One, is materially by giving the food, shelter, and clothing. Or second, I could help them spiritually by giving them the love of Jesus, his grace and mercy in the sacraments.

Then I asked myself: which of these two ways of helping people lasts longer? You know the answer of course. Material needs are only earthly but spiritual needs are eternal. And who provides for people’s spiritual needs? Bingo: priests do. But can you taste the well water of God’s love for me 10 years later when I was 17? Ever since I was seven and left India, I have not been concerned so much with things that don’t last – and nothing earthly ultimately lasts.

But rather my concern was with God who lasts forever and the One I can never lose. Just like couples should go back to drink deeply of their original encounter and experience of falling in love, so, too, we Christians should frequently return to our first experience of falling in love with the Lord and drink deeply of that well water. I wonder how often the Samaritan woman returned to that earthly well where she met Jesus, not to draw water from it, but to remember “the spring of living water” that was now “welling up to eternal life within” her heart?

My friends, I would urge you to try to return to the day and way you first fell in love with God. I cannot guess how that happened for each of you, just like you probably could not have guessed how it happened for me five minutes ago. In other words, divine love is as unique and unrepeatable just like a kiss is. No two people kiss exactly the same. I’m just guessing about that; I did a google search on that to make sure I was right.

But I hope by sharing my own story of falling in love with God may sparks some memories of how that happened for you. Don’t discount that you can fall in love with God even in a traumatic moment. Sometimes when we think we are farthest from God, surprisingly, that is when God is closest to us. It’s like that old bumper sticker that asks: “Do you feel far from God? Well, who moved?” And when we remember his closeness, we can love God a little more with all our hearts, soul and mind.

Praised be Jesus Christ!