Word of the Year
"For God so loved the world..."
Do you pick a word of the year? Sometimes my word of the year feels arbitrary: I pick something because it is January 1st and, you know, I should probably work on that. I remember one year I picked “Nourish” because I was thinking I should cook better meals for my family, and of course, also nourish our souls and minds. But I had to keep reminding myself of the word.
Some years I completely forget the word I picked! Apparently last year I told a dear friend I had picked the word “Radiate” but then I forgot all about it and focused on Hope and Wisdom last year. As in, I hope I can find some wisdom! :) But seriously, I thought: the Lord is my Hope, and I look to Him for Wisdom. He will give me the Wisdom I need to navigate these waters of life.
This year, I picked Loved. I intentionally did not choose Love, because that’s an outpouring of the love of my heart. I chose Loved that I might meditate this year on how much we are loved by God. “For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). Sometimes I think I focus too much on myself - *I* need to love God more, *I* need to bring others to love Him more.
But when we know that we are loved, then we are moved to love in return. As St. Paul said, “Let us therefore love God, because God first hath loved us.” (1 John 4:19) It is not as if God is some mighty Pharoah or dictator who says, ‘You must love me because I’m the boss and I’m in charge!’ He loved us first, and then He showed His love in a million ways, from the petals on a flower, to the way our lungs work without our thinking about them, to sending His Divine Son to suffer and die for our salvation, to the car accident He saved us from yesterday by making us leave the house several minutes late.
In Lauren Daigle’s song “Kaleidoscope Jesus”, she sings to Our Lord, “You go out of your way to make me feel like I'm the one You love.” What if we took the time to notice the moment-to-moment things that God does to make us know that we are loved? Did you see that beautiful full moon dipping in and out of the clouds like a cookie in whipped cream last Sunday morning when we got up for early Mass?
Did you notice that patch of perfect blue sky and those crisp white-capped mountains when we took the young people snow tubing? On my last run down the tubing slope, I just looked around and delighted in it. The sky, the mountains, the crisp air, the beautiful white and blue in contrast…God did all this for me. Yes, He did it for all of us, but I have often read in spiritual books that God loves us as if we were the only one. He would have created the world just for me; He would have died on the cross just for me. Sometimes it’s hard to get our minds around that.
Our Lord once said to St. Teresa of Avila in a vision, “I would create the universe again just to hear you say that you love Me”. Although St. Teresa was much closer to Him in friendship and love than I am, I would like to contemplate that. He created the universe for me, to show His love so that I would reciprocate. But I can’t make a new world for Him in return! All I can offer Him is my poor heart, like the Christmas song says.
“What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.” ~ Christina Rossetti, “In the Bleak Mid-winter”
If I start by meditating on how much He loves me, and how much He has shown His love for me, it makes it so much easier to love in return. Once I have grasped, to the best of my meager intellect, the concept that the God of all creation loves ME, then I can think, “What can I do, Lord, to show my gratitude?”
The answer lies here: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind” (Matt 22:37) and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matt. 22:39)
So my word of the year is LOVED. I am loved by God in an infinite way. I am loved beyond my comprehension. I am loved from all eternity, before I was created, because there is no time with God; all is eternal. And for some unfathomable reason, He craves the love of my poor little heart. He wants it!
“It is precisely this individual love of each human heart that He covets, by which He desires to be repaid for the individual and quite special love of His Sacred Heart for each one of us. It is for this that He made us. There is something in the love of my heart which He cannot find elsewhere, which, if I refuse Him, He will never have. He has made it capable of some form and expression of love which singularly delights Him. That I might give it Him, He made me.” ~ Mother Mary Loyola, With the Church volume 1: Advent to the Ascension.
This meditation changes my attitude toward Love of God from one of duty, like exercising or teaching geometry or loading the dishwasher, to one of desire. I want to return love to Him, who has loved me so much. The idea that there is “something in the love of my heart which He cannot find elsewhere” stirs up my want and need to love Him back.
Sometimes I wonder when I say things like this if I’m the last person to realize it. Maybe you all have been meditating on this already and knew this in the depths of your hearts. But this year, for me, it’s especially sinking into my soul. And so that is why my word of the year is LOVED.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you have a word of the year for 2025? Comment below!
And if you want to read more of my words, my book is available for pre-order here: Piety and Personality: The Temperaments of the Saints.