john on Lovable

There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.

A Valentine’s Day Tradition What better way to say, “I love you,” than passing your beloved some sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, and glycerin wrapped in a chalkly Necco wafer heart? Maybe some of you re...

Advent 2023: Make Some Noise! AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the David...

Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the Davidic line was the common narrative for how most peop...

When he was a young boy, twelfth-century church leader Bernard of Clairvaux fell asleep outside a church while waiting to go in for a Christmas Eve service. In his sleep he had a dream, a kind of visi...

Love your enemy-it will drive him nuts.

He loved us, not because we were lovely to him, but to make us lovely.

"When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable."

Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.

Joy is a net of love in which you can catch souls.

Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of  Where the Wild Things Are  and other children’s books, gets many letters from his young fans. A favorite was a “charming” drawing sent on by a little boy’s m...

In love. What does that even mean? “Love” is a junk drawer we dump all sorts of ideas into, just because we don’t have anywhere else to put them. I “love” God, and I “love” fish tacos. See the probl...

You shall love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart.

Katja, our seven-year-old granddaughter, stepped in it, as they say. She had doggie droppings on the bottom of her tennies. Not just one foot, mind you, but both. Her mother, Maureen, suggested she le...

He loves Thee too little, who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.

Only the beautiful is loved . . . we cannot help loving what is beautiful.

Brennan Manning shares a true story about a priest from Detroit who traveled to Ireland to visit family. One morning, he walked along the shores of Lake Killarney with his uncle. As they watched the s...

I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe, more loved and welcomed than I ever dared hope.

If you want to impact someone’s life, love them when they least expect it and least deserve it.

Love that reaches up is adoration. Love that reaches out is affection. But love that stoops is grace.

The desire to feel loved is the last illusion: let it go and you will be free

To love is to will the good of another. .

Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: “These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot...

Love is the crazy, mad, and perhaps ridiculous gesture of saying yes to life, of seeing it as worthy of our embrace and even worthy of our total sacrifice.

I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.

Love to be unknown.

There’s a charming story about a little boy who made a gingerbread man. He poured his heart into crafting it, carefully decorating it with candy eyes and a cheerful smile. It was his creation, and he ...

It was when I was happiest that I longed most. The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to find the place where all the beauty came from.

Lovers are the ones who know most about God; the theologian must listen to them.

We may remark in passing that to be blind and beloved may, in this world where nothing is perfect, be among the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness. The supreme happiness in life is the assura...