FALLING IN LOVE CHANGES EVERYTHING

I will always remember Peter. He was a member of my parish when I was a parish priest. He was about thirty years old, and a really nice person. But he was restless. He never stayed in one job for very long and had a succession of short-term girlfriends. I would often joke with him about this, but I’d also challenge him sometimes and ask why he wouldn’t commit himself to something or someone in life. And he would always use a phrase which I can still hear. He would say, “Oh, I’m keeping my options open.”

By the age of thirty I had already closed lots of options in my life. I had made lifelong ordination vows as a deacon and as a priest. And many of my friends had closed options in their own lives by making lifelong marriage vows. It seemed to me that it was okay to keep your options open perhaps in your twenties, but that doing so for too long risked leading a life lived on the surface, without roots or depth. Making lifelong vows to another person or to God was, I believed, a way of finding permanence, integrity, and authenticity in one’s life.

But at the same time, certainly in my twenties, I was very drawn to many of the ideas that are generally placed under the umbrella of “existentialism.” I particularly loved reading the French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. What I really admired about them was their unwavering determination to live lives that were authentic. They questioned whether it was possible to make lifelong vows with authenticity. They believed that as we grow, we change. Today, we are no longer the person that we were thirty years ago, so the vows I made as a young man, “till death us do part,” may no longer be authentic to who I am now. These vows no longer make me free. I think many people today have absorbed this understanding of the limitations of commitment. I still find these ideas intellectually compelling.

During those same early years, however, I came by the grace of God to know another truth, and for me, a deeper truth. And it is this truth that prompted me to make ordination and eventually monastic vows, and that may have prompted you to make your own marriage and other vows. At the heart of this truth is love. Falling in love, falling in love changes everything. Love—love for the beloved, love for God—makes us long to make vows of lifelong commitment to the beloved. This kind of love is unwavering, and often self-sacrificial; this love is unconditional and, even though we change, this love does not change. No one puts it more beautifully than Shakespeare in his 116th sonnet: “Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.” This sonnet describes a love that is constant, unwavering, and eternal, not changing with circumstances or the fading of beauty. This love is eternal.

I came to know that love. I would say I began to fall in love with God in my late teens. How can I best describe my falling in love with God? A passage from the Gospel according to John (1:35–39) comes close. John the Baptist is standing with two of his disciples, and Jesus walks by. “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” And the disciples followed Jesus. Jesus turns to them and says, “What are you looking for?” And they answered, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” And he said, “Come and see.”

This passage still gives me goosebumps because it is so close to my own experience of coming to faith. “Where are you staying?” Of course, the disciples aren’t interested in what house Jesus is staying in. This is a much more profound question. In their question they are using that great Greek verb menein, which lies at the heart of John’s gospel. It means to live, to dwell, to stay, to remain, to abide. They are really asking Jesus, “where do you abide?” They long to come closer to Jesus. As they come to know Jesus more and more, that longing will become more profound. Lord, how can we abide with you? How can we know you and love you so deeply that we can, as it were, enter into your very life and become one with you? Falling in love changes everything.

In my late teens, I too sensed Jesus walking by, and turning to me, and inviting me to follow him and to “come and see.” And that is what I did. That was the beginning of my own journey into faith. I read voraciously. I started to pray. My local vicar was rather puzzled by my enthusiasm, but he made one particular, life-changing suggestion. We were coming up to Easter, and, as he was telling me that the cross and resurrection were at the heart of the Christian faith, he said, “We don’t do it here, but if you can find a church that has an all-night Easter Vigil, I think you’d enjoy it.” It sounded very strange, though intriguing, but I couldn’t find one in the local churches. Eventually I found one about twenty miles away, at a Benedictine monastery called Downside Abbey. (I think God was at work!) So, I asked my bemused parents if I could borrow the car on Saturday night and drive to Downside. “It’s rather a long service and I wouldn’t be back till Sunday morning!”

Looking back, I believe that it was Jesus who invited me there, to “come and see.”

So, I came.

The worship was stunning, and I saw, with the eyes of my heart I saw that “love so amazing, so divine.” It was a huge step in my lifelong adventure of following Jesus, of drawing ever closer to and abiding with him, of entering into his very life: “You in me and I in you” (John 14:20). Falling in love changes everything.

The source of my commitment and self-offering to God is a response of profound gratitude to God for God’s unconditional, never-failing, never-changing love for me. A very special hymn for me perfectly expresses what I have tried to say here. It is nearly always sung at ordinations in England, and we also sang it at the monastery at my initial and life professions as a monk. I hope it will be sung at my funeral. The words are by Charles Wesley and the tune Hereford is by Samuel Sebastian Wesley. This is the opening verse:

O thou who camest from above
the fire celestial to impart,
kindle a flame of sacred love
upon the altar of my heart.

That flame was first lit when Jesus looked at me and said, “Come and see.”

Being faithful to Jesus for a lifetime is huge challenge. When life has been tough, when I have felt that I’ve had enough, this hymn has often sustained me. The final verse in particular has given me strength and a renewed commitment to the One who first loved me and called me.

Still let me prove thy perfect will,
my acts of faith and love repeat,
till death thy endless mercies seal,
and make the sacrifice complete.