Today’s first reading from the book of Revelation contains a powerful challenge that can easily be missed. John, its author, speaking in the voice of God, says something to this effect: I have seen how hard you work, seen your fidelity, and your hunger for the truth; but I have this against you, “you have lost the love you had at first.” That stings!
I went to the seminary at the age of seventeen and for the next eight years lived in a large seminary community, all of us young and immature. But our life together was mostly wonderful. Those were happy years. Today, all of us in that group are in our seventies and are mature. However, if we tried to live together now, we would more than likely kill each
other. We are more mature—though perhaps with less love in us now than when we were young.

It’s easy to be blind to this inside of ourselves. We change, we grow, we age, and sometimes we don’t see what those changes are doing to us. Hence, we can end up being dedicated, hard-working, truth-seeking, sincere persons, virtuous in most every way, except that this goodness has become encrusted inside an anger, bitterness, and subtle hatred that wasn’t so evident in us earlier in life. Is this attributable to natural aging or is this what John means when he says to the Church in Ephesus—and to us—you have lost the love you had at first?

Fr. Ronald Rolheiser
Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, teaches at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas, where he served as president for fifteen years. His books are popular throughout the English-speaking world, and his weekly column is carried by more than seventy newspapers worldwide.