Discovering Love (Part One): A Crazy Giver

Inspired by someone who said that Christ staying with us in the Eucharist is crazier than us staying up to be with Him at midnight.

When I was younger, I always thought that when I grew up, I wound fall madly in love with and marry some handsome, smart, funny, Catholic young man. Someone who would give me love and security. Someone who this world would consider…sane. Yet all those ideas began to change the day I fell in love with a man who is, well, crazy.

That’s right. Insane beyond belief. This man has quite the track record; he has broken every social, cultural, and practical norm and rule of his time. He fraternized with criminals. He overturned tables and preached in public squares. He was so poor that at times he ate heads of wheat. This poor man was the highest nobility, yet was born in a stable and lived in obscurity until he was 30 years old. Some people wanted to make him king, and others wanted to hurl him off a cliff. He was so dangerous that before he was 3 years old he already had an entire army out to kill him. He blessed the poor, the humble, the pure, and the children. He even blessed his enemies. But the craziest thing of all that he did was…to love me. And what a crazy lover he is! He never tires of speaking to me, and will spend as long as it takes to turn my tears into laughter. He leads me on the wildest adventures and yet he is the firmest and most unchanging reality that I know. He is eternally patient and faithful even when I fail him again and again. He sees the deepest, darkest depths of my soul, he has witnessed every mistake I’ve ever made, and yet he chooses to make me his most intimate friend. He knew that I would be selfish with his gifts, that I would waste and even reject his love…he knew that over and over again I would break his heart, and yet he still decided to love me, so much that he would give everything for me. I was guilty, and I deserved my punishment, and he who is perfect Love, Beauty, and Humility, he who is pure Innocence, freely chose to take my place. He died. For me. His love was so great that he rose from the dead. And after all of that, he even veiled himself under the appearance of bread so he could stay with me forever. He embodies the greatest paradox and irony we have ever observed, a paradox so insanely contradictory that we can’t even begin to comprehend it. In other words: He. Is. Crazy.

So yes, I have fallen in love with the craziest man the world has ever known, because he loves me as no other can, and because he has won for me the joy that nothing in this world can give. And I will spend the rest of my life making it up to him. I know that I will never fully succeed, because the love of my tiny, fragile heart will never be able to match the infinite love of his heart. But if he loves me despite my imperfections, if he never tires of pulling me up when I fall, and carrying me when I can’t walk another step, if he was born and died out of sheer love for me, then I will die trying to repay him. I may be crazy. But so is he. And with him at my side, I plunge into whatever craziness his love leads me to.