The human effort to love, as Jesus taught, is a struggle. Love isn’t easy, except in our daydreams. Fr. Rolheiser writes that we do not even need to look at the superficiality of cheap romantic novels or movies to see the truth of that. It suffices to merely attend church regularly, and I go there with good people who are sincere, committed, honest, and full of faith. But they (along with myself) are also human, and thus, as we stand together in a circle of faith, we are not always the idyllic picture of harmony and love of which our church hymns speak. We may be gathered in faith, but we are human, and we cannot but feel certain things in each other’s presence: jealousy, irritation, hurt, paranoia, distrust, and the sense of not being fully valued. And so, beneath our rhetoric of love, we also sometimes feel tension, distance, and even hostility. We sing brave songs that proclaim how open our hearts are and how we welcome everyone into this space, but invariably, there are parts of us that don’t quite mean those words, at least as they apply to some people. And this isn’t an anomaly; it’s true for all congregations, of every gathering, except those where everyone is already fully a saint. Love, this side of eternity, is not easy, at least not if we try to actually embrace everyone and not just our own kind. The older we get, the more we sense what love actually demands. It isn’t easy to say the words “I love you” and actually back that up. What does it mean to love someone? I would use just two words: fidelity and respect. Love means keeping your word, staying in a relationship, and not walking away. And love means fully respecting someone else, not violating anyone’s freedom, and positively blessing and helping others to grow according to their own internal dictates. What we actually feel when we do those things is sometimes less than warm, but love, as we know, is not a question of feeling but of fidelity. Partly, that is a gift, something from beyond us, from a God who can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, namely, remain together inside of family and community. In the end, that is what church and Eucharist are meant to do: On the night before he died, Jesus sat down with his disciples, and what he found there was what we also find whenever we go to church: a sincere bunch of people struggling to not let the jealousies, irritations, self-preoccupations, and wounds of life drive them apart. We come to church and to the Eucharist to ask God to do for us that which we cannot do for ourselves – love each other. Love is only sweet for those who are already saints and for those who are dangerously naive. Since we are neither, it’s good to be humble, admit our struggle, and then go to those places that can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.