In an essay in The New York Times [March 3, 2010], Harriet Brown writes of growing up in a broken home, with emotionally distant parents who were at constant war with each other and their children. Harriet grew up believing that there was something wrong with her, that she was somehow cold and ungracious, incapable of love. Friendships and relationships were disastrous — but she believed she deserved what she got, that she was the damaged one — and that anyone who got close enough to her deserved what they got, too.

Then she met the man who somehow broke through. She warned him that she was “too selfish” to love anyone. But he looked her in the eyes and said, “I know who you are. And I know you are a good loving person.” Hoping he was right, she married him.

Then she gave birth to their first daughter. And she discovered something: She could, indeed, love another person. Harriet writes:

“That night, and in the many wakeful nights and days that followed, I was thinking first, and nearly wholly, about someone else . . . What I felt for my daughter bypassed the language center of my brain altogether. It was a jolt, an electric sizzle that connected my head to my heart. . . I’d come to associate the word love with feelings of pain and despair. But this connection we had, this bond — this was a whole new experience. For weeks I did not, could not name it. And then one day the word slid out of my mouth as my daughter cried on the changing table. I love you, yes I do, I said, patting her dry, fastening the Velcro strips on the diaper cover. And for the first time in my life, I believed it.”

When we are able to see beyond the labels we assign ourselves and others, when we are able to embrace the needs and hopes of another — spouse, child, or friend — the love of Christ becomes a reality. Jesus the Healer and Reconciler, Jesus the Foot-washer, Jesus the Crucified, entrusts His Church a “new” standard and understanding of love: love that places others first and the common good before our own, love that renews and re-creates all human relationships, love that transforms the most Godless and secular worldview into the compassion and justice of God.

-Deacon Jay Cormier