‘I am just going to love you.’

July 1, 2022

By Sister Maria Lucia Stella Maris, Missionaries of the Word

July 1, 2022

“Jesus, I’m done discerning.” This was my prayer in the back of a quiet chapel, the summer after graduating college. The Lord’s call to me as a child was strong and clear, but the where and when were not. The many Holy Hours I’d spent wrestling with the mystery since had brought no clarity.

My prayer continued, “I am spending all my energy discerning, when all I really desire is to love you. So I am just going to love you, and love you lavishly. I ask your Blessed Mother to make the rest abundantly clear.”

At the time, I saw my prayer as a necessity of my heart, an urgency to respond to God’s love. Only later did I understand that perhaps it was what the Lord had been waiting for: for me to relinquish discernment as “my project” and to simply rejoice to be in relationship with him, to simply let myself be his.

The lesson the Lord taught me that day remains ever new, even now after final vows. How much more beautiful is the journey when lived in the simplicity of his love!

Sister Maria Lucia Stella Maris
Missionaries of the Word
Baileys Harbor, Wis.

Father Christopher Murphy, Diocese of Providence.

‘I am just going to love you.’

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