One day, when I was in high school, one of my best friends came to me with an idea.  Tim had met a girl.  He really didn’t just “meet” her.  We had all known each other for several years, having gone through jr. high and high school together.  It would be more truthful to say that Tim had just recently fallen in love with Sue.  And now, everything was different.  Tim was looking for a way to show his great love for Sue to the world.   He wanted everybody to know of his love.  He wanted to shout it from the rooftops of the great metropolis of Logansport.  It was important for him to find some way to express his love.  He thought about a tattoo.  But I talked him out of that one.  I had suggested that he just go to the mall and just have a T-shirt made that said, “I heart Sue!”   That would be simple enough.  And back in the late 1970’s, everybody was putting his or her feelings on a T-shirt.  But no, that wasn’t dramatic enough for Tim.  Finally, Tim decides that he’s going to climb one of those massive, green, water towers that every town in Indiana has, and paint “Tim loves Sue” on the side of the water tower.   And, he wants me to go with him to do it!  Now, have I ever told you guys about how much I hate heights?  There’s no way!  Right now, the whole tattoo idea is sounding pretty good.  Go ahead, Tim, mark up your body.  I think that it was right about there in my friendship with Tim, that we found the boundary of our relationship.  I wasn’t climbing any water tower for my friend and his new girlfriend.  Now remember, Tim was in love.  And I wasn’t, at least not with Sue.  And being in love makes you do some crazy things, some extreme things, especially when you’re young and in love.  Now, those water towers, are a hundred to a hundred and twenty feet high.

I tried talking my friend out of his testimony to love, but he was determined.  He went out and bought the paint.  He got red and black, our high school colors.  He figured out how to get over the fence surrounding the base of the water tower.  He was all set to go on a Friday night at midnight.  But it was raining cats and dogs when Friday night came around.  So he couldn’t do it.  Now, I prayed for my friend.  Not only was this stupid and dangerous, but it was illegal.  It was a crime.  I prayed that Tim would have a change of heart.  He didn’t have to, Sue had gotten so fed up with his craziness, that by the next Friday night, they had already broken up.  “Aren’t you glad you didn’t get a tattoo?”  I said. 

       Today, Jesus talks to us about loving Him.  He’s not asking us to climb a water tower, or get a tattoo, or become someone or something that we’re not.  He is asking us to obey His commandments.  My brothers and sisters, this is supposed to be the way that we are showing our love for Him.  And we don’t like commandments today, any commandments.  We’ve got a lot of people – the government, the media, the ACLU, our bosses, our teachers, our doctors - all telling us what to do.  We have so many people telling us what to do that God’s Ten Commandments get lost in all the other “you gotta do this’s” that we have in this life.   And that can’t happen.  We might not like being told what to do, but God’s commandments are not like everybody else’s.  One day, we are going to be judged according to God’s commandments.  We might like to be politically correct.  We all might like to never break a law of our government.  We all want to get along and perform well at our work or our school.  But in the end, when we leave this world, the only commandments that are going to mean anything, are God’s.  We need to be showing our love for Him by obeying His commandments.  There is a test coming up for all of us, and yeah, we are going to want to pass that final exam.

       Even more importantly, we need to obey the commandments for the right reasons.  Our religion, our morality, the Christian Faith; these are not games.  We don’t obey the commandments just because we’re afraid of what happens if we don’t.  We obey the commandments because they are the right way to live, and they are expressions of our love for our God.  God doesn’t ask for so much.  He’s not asking the impossible.  And God’s love lasts forever.  He’s not going to quit on us.  We can’t quit on Him.  The Holy Spirit will help us to keep the commandments.  God even gives us His own special power source, to do what He commands.   The commandments are NOT suggestions.  They are God’s way of love.

        When we were younger, we probably all did a lot of crazy things out of love and infatuation.  I never painted a water tower, but I’ve got my own list of stupid things that I did out of love.  I’m sure you do too.

God commandments are not so crazy.  In fact, they make pretty good sense.  And when you’re in love with God, they’re not so hard to follow, even if you don’t like being told what to do.

May God bless us today, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…AMEN !!!

St. Maria Goretti…Pray for us !!!