Growing in Love
Too often in our culture today love is mistaken for some sort of sentimentality as though love were merely a feeling, albeit the most intense of feelings. Of course, feeling "in love" is real and ought to be respected, but love cannot be simply "a feeling." Feelings are shallow and shaky. They change.
Love does not change, "...love endures all things. Love never fails" (1 COR 13:7-8). Love is the opposite of shallow or shaky. Love is the foundation, the cornerstone upon which humanity stands firm and steadfast because God is love (1 John 4:8) and God made us and defines us. And this foundation is sacrificial: "there is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). It is the gift of self for another, demonstrated ultimately by Jesus Christ in his passion and death on the cross, which we are called to imitate. This is the paradox by which we are admitted to Heaven: to die to self, to attain eternal life. This paradox has a name, and it is love.
There is nothing shallow or shaky about the crucifixion. It is the event that defines all fortitude. With Christ before our eyes, love can never be simply a feeling. It is always so much more; in fact, it is everything. All of manhood, all of womanhood, all of what it is to be Christian, all of what is means to be human is summed up in this willingness to sacrifice for another.
Love does not change, "...love endures all things. Love never fails" (1 COR 13:7-8). Love is the opposite of shallow or shaky. Love is the foundation, the cornerstone upon which humanity stands firm and steadfast because God is love (1 John 4:8) and God made us and defines us. And this foundation is sacrificial: "there is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). It is the gift of self for another, demonstrated ultimately by Jesus Christ in his passion and death on the cross, which we are called to imitate. This is the paradox by which we are admitted to Heaven: to die to self, to attain eternal life. This paradox has a name, and it is love.
There is nothing shallow or shaky about the crucifixion. It is the event that defines all fortitude. With Christ before our eyes, love can never be simply a feeling. It is always so much more; in fact, it is everything. All of manhood, all of womanhood, all of what it is to be Christian, all of what is means to be human is summed up in this willingness to sacrifice for another.
"Let the root of Love be in you, nothing can spring from it but the good..." -St. Augustine
By growing in love, Tolle Lege Summer Institute means encountering the source of all love, coming to greater clarity of what love is, and the growth which occurs in any real friendship.
The teens who attend Tolle Lege encounter the source of all love, namely God, daily. Each morning begins with the Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours and the celebration of Mass. Each night concludes with Night Prayer, Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and our own version of St. Ignatius' Examen prayer.
Growing in our understanding of love is also integral to the institute's mission. Through the prayers of the Church (Mass, Liturgy of the Hours, etc.) the mysteries of God are opened to us publicly. And privately, Tolle Lege sets aside time for reflection and contemplation to listen to God in the silence of our hearts. Additionally, the lectures and classes of Tolle Lege penetrate the mystery of our relationship with God in ways that may not be familiar to the teens, broadening their minds, and opening hearts.
Finally friendship with God is a part of the Tolle Lege mission. The best of friends don't isolate large portions of their lives from one another, and they certainly don't exclude each other from the most important aspects. How much more, then, should we be open and vulnerable with our Creator, who yearns to develop an eternal and salvific friendship with us. At Tolle Lege, we strive to demonstrate how the Christian Life can be lived fully, while still being a part of the culture today. Christianity has never survived buried under a rock. Christians are called to be light and leaven to the world and that means we must go out and encounter the culture everywhere and however we find it. True Christian Joy never ends at the doors of the Church but reaches out to dinners downtown, to ultimate frisbee, poolside cookouts and even the occasional Indians game. Not because Jesus said to do all those things explicitly, but because Jesus desires with everything he is to be our most intimate friend, and these are just some of the things friends do.
The teens who attend Tolle Lege encounter the source of all love, namely God, daily. Each morning begins with the Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours and the celebration of Mass. Each night concludes with Night Prayer, Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, and our own version of St. Ignatius' Examen prayer.
Growing in our understanding of love is also integral to the institute's mission. Through the prayers of the Church (Mass, Liturgy of the Hours, etc.) the mysteries of God are opened to us publicly. And privately, Tolle Lege sets aside time for reflection and contemplation to listen to God in the silence of our hearts. Additionally, the lectures and classes of Tolle Lege penetrate the mystery of our relationship with God in ways that may not be familiar to the teens, broadening their minds, and opening hearts.
Finally friendship with God is a part of the Tolle Lege mission. The best of friends don't isolate large portions of their lives from one another, and they certainly don't exclude each other from the most important aspects. How much more, then, should we be open and vulnerable with our Creator, who yearns to develop an eternal and salvific friendship with us. At Tolle Lege, we strive to demonstrate how the Christian Life can be lived fully, while still being a part of the culture today. Christianity has never survived buried under a rock. Christians are called to be light and leaven to the world and that means we must go out and encounter the culture everywhere and however we find it. True Christian Joy never ends at the doors of the Church but reaches out to dinners downtown, to ultimate frisbee, poolside cookouts and even the occasional Indians game. Not because Jesus said to do all those things explicitly, but because Jesus desires with everything he is to be our most intimate friend, and these are just some of the things friends do.
"The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God's will increasingly coincide: God's will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself."
-Pope Benedict XVI