If you are not sure whom or what you love, just check out your checkbook.  Look around your house at the way you decorate.  You will quickly discern whom or what you love.  It’s a vital question to ask yourself.  It is important to ponder the object of your love for the sake of your soul.

The second week of Advent is a strategic time to examine whom or what you love.  The focus of your love will determine the health of your soul.  There is only one way to have a healthy soul and that is to love God.  If you do not love God with all your heart, mind and soul, you will love the world.  You cannot have a healthy soul when you love the world.  St. Augustine said that we either love God to the point of self-contempt or we love ourselves to the point of contempt for God.  Augustine doesn't define self-contempt as a hatred of oneself, rather as a freedom from single minded focus on one’s selfish desires and pleasures.  I think a better way to say it is that we either love God so much that we are free of our own self-focus, or we love the world so much that we have lost a sense of God.

When you love God to the full extent of your human ability to love you will discover that you so completely trust Him that He could tell you the craziest thing and you will be obedient.  That’s the kind of love you see in Mary after the angel came to tell her that she was going to be pregnant with the promised Messiah.  Mary is a perfect example for us of what loving God will do for a soul.

Love is an incredible emotion.  Love can rescue your soul from despair and emptiness.  Loving God and loving your neighbor the way you naturally love yourself is the greatest experience this earth has to offer.