For the past 43 days, I’ve been reading and blogging on the subject of human love as an expression of the divine. Last week I focused on love as expressed through the priesthood, and this week, love as expressed by the saints.

Starting tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, I’d like to invite you to participate in a different kind of daily challenge. I created “The 40 Day Challenge” last year as a way to build up my own marriage, and posted it for others who would like a similar Lenten project. Won’t you join me in renewing your own “Love Project” as we prepare to celebrate the world’s greatest love story, the atoning death and resurrection of Christ?

For now, I’d like to conclude “The Love Project” with one of my favorite excerpts from St. Augustine’s Confessions (p.320).

“It is for Christ that the friend of the Bridegroom longs. Already he has laid his spiritual harvest in Christ’s keeping, but still, he groans in his heart, waiting for that adoption which is the ransoming of our bodies from their slavery. He longs for Christ, for he is a member of the Church, the Bride of Christ. His love for Christ is great, for he is the Bridegroom’s friend, and his great love is for Christ, not for himself; for it is not in his own voice but amid the roar of the floods you send that he calls upon those who are sunk deeper than himself in the abyss, and this is because, in his great love of Christ, he fears for them. He knows that the serpent beguiled Eve with his cunning and he fears that, in the same way, their minds may be corrupted and lose that innocence which is theirs in Christ, our Bridegroom, your only-begotten Son. How bright a light of beauty will shine before our eyes when we see Christ as he is and gone are those tears, which are still my diet, morning and evening, as I listen to the taunt: “Where is your God now?” …

“Early in the morning I shall present myself before him. I shall see my champion and my God, who will give life to our perishable bodies too, for the sake of his Spirit who dwells in us, because in his mercy he moved over the dark waters of our souls. This is the pledge which has been given to us in our pilgrimage on earth, so that we may now be light.”

Today’s Love in Action: You know what to do … Tomorrow morning, click on “The 40 Day Challenge Link,” and rejuvenate your own love story! God bless you!”