Biographies of saints that get it right, Part 4 of 4

You cannot tell the story of a saint without telling the story of God’s love for his people. The saint is where the love of Christ is made manifest in a particular way, in a particular time, for particular communities and people. Saints never stand alone: Christ is with them, and they bring Christ to others.

In this fourth and final installment of this series on biographies of the saints, we examine two works: “Oscar Romero and the Communion of Saints” (Orbis Books, $24) by Scott Wright with Octavio Duran, and “Bakhita: From Slave to Saint” (Ignatius Press, $16.95) by Roberto Italo Zanini — both testify to the presence of communion in the life of every saint.

Read the rest at OSV

Love Is Always Conditional

We want to say that love is unconditional. It seems right. It is equal parts comforting and challenging. It is comforting because if I am loved, then there is nothing I can do to lose that. It is challenging because in order to love, I have to will to be untroubled by obstacles. We do not want to say love is conditional because we fear submitting love to the twisted logic of relationship terrorism: if you do not meet my demands, I deprive you of what is good for you, or vice versa. We think of conditions as qualifications and we do not want to attach qualifications to love. So we say love is unconditional. But that is wrong. Love is always conditional.

Read more at Church Life Journal