In this Monday’s Office of Readings (for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul), John Chrysostom wrote, describing St. Paul: “The most important thing of all to him, however, was that he knew himself to be loved by Christ.”

How many of us can say that about ourselves, that the most important thing of all to each of us is that we know ourselves to be loved by Christ?  That reminds me of a quote I’ve shared before, but think it apt to share it with you again:

Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words, “I am the one Jesus loves.” . . . When I called him, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning.  At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus’ closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as “the one Jesus loved.”  Manning said, “If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’”  What would it mean, I ask myself, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as “the one Jesus loves”?   (Philip Yancey)

May the Holy Spirit, the love of Christ that has been poured out into our hearts, bring us more and more to this point.