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The two words of the title seem to fit well together, especially with the celebration of Pentecost as the conclusion of the Easter Season, where the symbol for the presence and action of the Spirit of God is fire. If we are open to the possibility of being personally affected by the Holy Spirit as an ongoing, growing, guiding, and inspiring force, “spiritual fire” will serve us well. Interior realities cannot be adequately expressed in words, and certainly not by definitions, but we need words to help us consciously focus our hearts and minds on the central purpose of our lives.
If we only acknowledge that we are spiritual beings, that does not mean that we act according to that simple truth. However, if we reflect on ourselves as being moved by, and touching others with, spiritual fire of which only spiritual beings are capable, the results are personal gain and blessings for everyone else. This kind of fire does no harm, but it warms hearts and enlightens minds. We know that this is true, not simply because we have been told, but from personal experience.
No one has been hurt by a kind word or helpful action on our part, even if for them it was surprising and unexpected. Whatever we do with good intentions, whether it is understood or not, still warms other’s hearts, coming as it does from the perhaps unperceived and gentle warmth originating in our own heart. Such ordinary movements of spiritual fire are usually only recognized as such when we reflect on those actions and inspirations of our day and notice how they elicit gratitude and thankfulness for being created and graced with such a capacity and desire for goodness.
Spiritual fire is not a form of spontaneous combustion, but an activity that requires us to do our part in providing fuel for it, not wood or other physical consumables, but a conscious openness to God, especially through prayer. No matter what ways we enter personal contact with God, the Holy Spirit liberally pours into us those movements of infinite love that encourage and enable us to act as those who bear love to others. We do not see how this happens, for it is not at all the same as providing a substance that could somehow be burned up in the process of loving. Rather, this kind of fire expands in us as we expend it, and, ultimately sourced in God, this fire always has good effects, no matter how others respond.
Come Holy Spirit and set our hearts on fire with your divine love.
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Our disposition toward people can only be called “ordinary” in the sense of being habitual, but the way we direct our attention towards everyone, especially in words and gestures, is far from ordinary in the effects it has not only on others, but on us as well. We do not become caring people by making a single decision to do so, but by daily choices we make in ordinary and extraordinary situations that occur day by day. When we were young, we might have followed examples of family members, teachers, friends, and even public figures whose images, whether real or projected, appealed to us. Later in life, many of us reflected on how we relate with others and made many successive choices that have influenced the way we act now.
We can gain a deeper understanding of our interactions with people, those close to us as well as those we barely know, by reflecting on our motivation for not becoming a habitually ornery person. Not surprisingly, the more we believe that we are loved, the more we want to be caring and careful with others at all levels of our communication with them. However, not all of us have always or even consistently accepted that we are loved, or at least not to the extent that we want to be loving toward others. Even the word “love” has been problematic for some, because it has been so badly misapplied to thoughts and actions that are anything but loving.
Some of us were blessed with loving families from the start; others found love, or were confirmed in love, later in life. However, we have always been immersed in the absolute love of God, the origin and giver of our unique lives, although we might only have begun to recognize this slowly, through human interactions in which God’s presence is revealed, as well as in personal prayer and occasional religious experiences. Beauty, such as we find in nature, whether a grand scene, such as the immensity of the heavens or the vastness of the sea, or inspirations that come in noticing the intricacy of a tiny insect or a lovely flower, are also expressions of God’s love for us.
Whether we think about it or not, when we are treated kindly or act this way ourselves, we are touched by goodness, another revelation of the loving presence of God among us.
Even ordinary love is never ornery.
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Friday, June 12, 2026 was a day when many Catholics celebrated a Feast that identifies the Heart of Jesus as a powerful force of love that invites, supports, and encourages those who accept it. The Saturday following that celebration looks at Mary, the mother of Jesus, and ponders gratefully how the love of the woman who bore Jesus into and for the world enables us to relate with her son but in no way seeks to coerce, force, or control our responses. We see such loving behavior in women whose love is recognized by those who witness it as empowering others but not seeking any good other than that of those whom they love.
We all need to be loved like this, for we know, again intuitively rather than by deeply thinking about it, that any expression of love that is true and sincere is never in any way manipulative, and frees us to believe in ourselves and to trust in others, including God. The Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary are unified in seeking our acceptance of this love which will enable us to become more responsive to God and more freely caring for all whom God loves. Jesus loves us as we are, and so does his mother, who treasures all those for whose sake God chose to become one of us.
The experience of those who let themselves be loved in this way, who consciously accept the open-hearted gift, is that of being empowered to live more genuinely as the good people we aspire to be. It is a much more effective way of becoming our better selves by acknowledging this love offered to us than to strive through our own efforts to grow in care and concern for people, the environment, and every other human endeavor that we might hold as desirable.
Love is not a thing, but a choice that essentially arises in the hearts of people. We know how significant it is for us when another person loves us, for we cannot make it happen but are always changed for the better because of it. Love is a gift that is profoundly transformative because its ultimate source is in the heart of God who guides all who respond to love by choosing to love, thereby fulfilling their purpose in life and finally entering union with God and all who love God.
There are no limits to the enabling power of love.
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There are two ways to understand the title on this page. The first might be about our training in basic arithmetic. The other is a common way of saying that people are more important than material goods, and certainly more important than anything that they do or could do. As people, we are more valuable than any form of wealth or power. From the perspective of being loved into being by the direct intention of God, we are, each one, made capable of loving God and all God’s people by our free choice.
This kind of message, in much better language, is what Pope Leo keeps saying in his speeches and talks, and in his recent written work, called “Magnificent Humanity.” He refers often to our inherent dignity as humans, and to “the common good” of all people as the main concern of human society, from the smallest unit of family to individual nations and to all of us who share this one home, earth. For anyone interested in a truthful exposition of our value as people, denied and contradicted by many and varied organizations, Pope Leo’s Encyclical is very much worth reading.
For now, we might realize that our innate belief that “people count” is very important, for we can look around and see what happens wherever some people ignore this truth and treat others of less value than themselves, or only useful for their own purposes, or even of having no worth at all. The pain so many of us experience daily in seeing the way some of our fellow humans are treated gives witness to the source of such wrongness, the denial of the intrinsic goodness of all people.
We do not need anyone’s permission to believe and to share, by word and by deed, that everyone “counts.” no one is or can be without worth, even if they behave as terribly as we know that some do. This does not mean that we ignore hurtful behavior, whether blatantly deliberate or arising from unrecognized moral injuries they have received. Rather, in acknowledging their offences and at the same time their innate capacity for goodness, we pray for them and help them if we can, to be healed of those destructive tendencies that destroy their humanity as they cause injury to others.
One of our responsibilities as humans who are of incalculable worth is to let this truth affect how we speak to and about others, and about how and when we act in accord with our belief. Since in some situations and regarding some specific people this might be almost impossible for us to sincerely desire, we can do no better than to spend some quiet time in the presence of God, making ourselves available for receiving the grace of living the truth more fully that people count.
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Whether driving or walking, if we see a sign that says “Stop” or hear someone warning us to stop, we will almost always do so. Sometimes the authority is that of the government, at other times we attribute authority to whoever gives us the warning. We rely on previous experience whether to trust that whoever warns us is concerned about our welfare or is attempting to manipulate us in some way. We can usually tell the difference between the urgency in the voice of someone being protective and the more self-interested tone of voice of someone seeking our attention for their own purposes.
It is easy to imagine our response to a police officer in uniform telling us to stop, or even a stranger who warns us and is standing in front of something that we can almost immediately recognize as dangerous. What might be our response if God were to tell us to stop what we are doing? If we thought that it really was God, would we stop first and then ask questions if we thought it important to know? Or would we immediately question whether this was necessary and perhaps seek an alternative? This thought exercise is not about a remote possibility but a faith perspective worth considering, for the equivalent of “stop” is a relatively common occurrence in people’s inner experiences. We do not usually hear such warnings with our ears, but we do receive impulses to not proceed as we were thinking of doing which we can notice and respect or we can go right ahead as if nothing has crossed our minds and hearts.
When God gently but clearly communicates the equivalent of “Stop,” our level of trust will be manifested in how or even whether we respond. Some of us might have had sufficient previous experience to know that any such warning is always to our benefit, even if we cannot see how or why this is so. At other times, we might have been so attached to what we intended to say or do that our feelings of disappointment might have led us to thoughts that being warned to stop was unfair or unwarranted. We might have struggled with our thoughts and feelings until we came to a peaceful resolution. Or, exercising our freedom to choose, we might have gone ahead as per our plan. If we later reflected, we would have found that we were not in any way punished, but we still might have noticed that we did not feel at peace at having ignored the impulse we had received.
Reviewing some of our past experiences can be very affirming, both of our awareness of receiving such caring graces from God, and of the positive difference it has made for us when we stopped whatever we had in mind to do.
A popular song once carried this message, which might speak to some of our experiences with God: “Stop, in the name of love!”