Dear Friends,

In "Love and Responsibility", John Paul II invites us to understand how God made us to love and be loved and what that means.  

One of the beautiful points he makes is that there are 3 levels of friendship.  Forgive me for not pulling up the official terms currently. Right now I'm just talking from my heart.

The first level is acquaintance.  You know this person because you see them all the time at the store or something. You may even ask how their children are doing and such, but there's a very low level of friendship.  

The next level is deeper.  You like being with the other person because you have a lot of things in common.  You might like to go hiking, watch movies, or have art appreciation in common.  Many people are confused because they think that this is a deep level of friendship.  They enjoy the other person very much.  However, when some of these things they like to do in common are out of the picture for some reason, the friendship falls apart.  Some people get married on this level and then the marriage falls apart eventually.

The third level of friendship is virtue - willing to suffer for the other . . . putting the other person in front of yourself.  In this level, we are transformed.  We learn to love when we do not  want to.  We learn to love like God loves us - unconditionally and completely.  God is not outdone in generosity.  When we choose to love like this, we receive the Fruits of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22):  Peace, Joy, Love, self-control, generosity, goodness, etc. etc. etc.

The other day I was at the SEEK24 Conference for FOCUS.  We were at the hotel and I saw a priest walk up to a man with small children and he said, "Thank you for your vocation."  God is SO good!  Marriage and Family is a very important and amazing vocation.  For those of you called to it, embrace it with the 3rd level of friendship in mind.  That is where we find our contentment.  With God's grace and frequenting the sacraments, we can allow God to transform us more and more into His Divine Nature that we are called to. God loves us beyond the 3rd level of friendship and He calls us to this beautiful truth.  God bless you!