A great tragedy of our world is that men and women do not know, really know, that God loves them. Some believe it in a shadowy sort of way, but their belief in God’s love for them can be very remote and abstract.

Because of this, we do not know how to…we do not know how to…love God back. Often we don’t even try, because it all seems so very difficult or we can think we’re doing our faithful best by repeating repetitive words and rituals but we need to realize that the Christian faith, in its essence, is a love affair between God and each human being. Not just a simple love affair: it is a passionate love affair.

God so loved each of us that he created us in his image? Have you heard that one before? God so loved each of us that he became human himself, died on a cross, was raised from the dead by the Father, ascended into heaven—and all this in order to bring each of us back to himself, to that heaven which we had lost through our own fault? Sound kinda familiar?

Yes, of course us Christians have dogmas, rules and regulations but they all concern love, which is the essence. Dogmas and tenets without love are dead letters, not even worth spelling out. God is love. And where love is, God is.

It is time we awoke from our long sleep, we Christians. It is time we shed our fears of and about God.

Our relationship toward and about God tends to move in cycles. For how long we’ve heard of the necessity of a “personal relationship” with God as though that’s the end all. Heard countless times, “Is Jesus the Lord and Savior of your Life?” as though it’s a “yes/no quiz” question on life’s final test. Or, the best, or worse, is taking out of context and isolating one sentence out of John’s Gospel and making it the gospel: if you don’t accept Jesus as your Savior then you’re going to Hell. Period.

That’s not Catholic theology. That’s Protestant. There is of course a singular bond between the Creator and the created. But the very much stronger bond is called the Body of Christ. Kinda sounds familiar, I hope? The Body of Christ.

The Body of Christ that gathers and brings us to this ritual, the Body of Christ that we eat and the Body of Christ that we become, share and act upon in our behaviors and commitments to each other. And to our treatment of the earth and dealings with other nations.

Now that’s a passionate love worth embracing and living. The peace and joy we all seek? That love brings us and fills us up with an authentic, true and lasting peace. A Divine peace. This “Body of Christ love” immerses us in a joy far more fulfilling than that silly one sided God and Me one. Those private questions and answers that we all have and hold up are handled and erased by the amount of love that we love about ourselves and the love, care and support we extend to others.

Because as we say in Church, “Thanks be to God.”

Adapted from Catherine de Hueck Doherty, “Grace in Every Season”

Catherine de Hueck Doherty (1896–1985), a laywoman of Russian heritage, was foundress of the Madonna House Apostolate in Combermere, Canada. Details at madonnahouse.org.