Where God's Love Flows

My faith is dressed in all that I have lived: the personality that I have, the events that I have lived through – good or bad – the culture that has shaped me, the strengths, and weaknesses of my character… My relationship with God is intricately woven around every nook and cranny of everything that makes up the person that I am today. God has poured himself and keeps on pouring himself into all of that. I can welcome God only in who I am as I am and not as I wish or think I should be.

I once read that Saint Philip Neri, who, according to his biographers, had the gift of levitation, would swivel in mid-air to turn his back on women when they walked down the aisle of the church so as not to look at them. This detail, whether it is legend or fact, was no doubt intended by his hagiographers as a sign of his holiness. I am certain that Saint Philip will forgive me if I am tempted to think that it may also have been a sign of his phobia of the opposite sex. Even the flaws in our psyche are not obstacles to the flow of God’s love in the person whose heart is open to that love.