Faith on the Quad Choosing to Love

Jul 7, 2009

I taught Totus Tuus last summer. Totus Tuus is a program utilized by several dioceses around the United States in which a group of four college students travels from parish to parish to teach week-long sessions to both grade school and high school students. The four teachers form a team which becomes both the biggest blessing – and the biggest lesson of the summer.

As a teacher, I didn’t get to choose my team. Instead, it was created by the directors of the program who placed me with three other people I had never met. I had to learn to work, plan, problem-solve and relax with these new friends. By the end of the summer, I truly loved each of them and was grateful for our time together, however it took a lot of work to reach this point.

This work is not a bad thing. I grew up with my two best friends and have never had to work very hard at loving either one of them. Our personalities mesh perfectly.  Because of this, I had never learned what it meant to choose to love a person. I could not dismiss my teammates as people I didn’t want to deal with, I had to choose to love them.

In the beginning it was difficult. A tone of voice could secretly set me off. Feeling misunderstood could raise my blood pressure. In general, I was often annoyed with these people who were so different from me. However, after reflecting on a conversation I had with an older woman about the difficulties of loving her spouse and how her resolve to choose love brought about real, deep, lasting love, I decided to test my own will power.

First, I had to make a distinction between loving and feeling love towards someone. I could love someone I didn’t feel particularly warm towards. I told myself that I loved each member on my team, and that I was going to start acting like it. I learned that venting about their flaws was disastrous to this attempt. It only added fuel to my exasperated fire.

Once I cut this habit out of my day, things started to improve inside my heart. The choice to love became easier, and I actually started to enjoy it. I began to see each of my teammates’ individual gifts. I especially saw progress in my perception of my fellow female teammate. Her personality, spirit, and personhood in general appeared more and more beautiful as I learned to love her. She soon became someone I wanted the best for. As a result of my daily choice to love her I know love her with ease.

This experience echoed into my other relationships. My whole idea of love has been renewed. I now know that it is possible to love those who make me angry, annoy me, or even offend me. If love is a choice, then a lack of love towards even my enemy is my own responsibility. This is where unconditional comes from: the will.

“Choice love” can be learned in any situation. However, I think summer jobs offer the best environment for exercising this habit. Many of us are placed in kitchens or offices with people we wouldn’t usually choose to hang out with. We simply put up with them during the day, and complain about them in the evening. Our real challenge as Christians is to choose to love our co-workers, siblings, parents, professors and teammates. Nothing they do strips us of this responsibility. It’s our choice.