We will never love enough

On Tuesday a new bishop was ordained for Westminster Diocese. On one side of the little prayer card given out on the day was a scripture quote with, beside it, a heart surmounted by a small cross, like the Jesus Caritas symbol of St Charles de Foucauld. And on the other side, some words of his, literally in the small print, like any reminder or obligation - We will never love enough.

I looked them up, and discovered they came from the last letter Charles wrote, just a few hours before his assassination. Writing of God, and of suffering and the inadequacy of our love, he said: But we know that we would like to love, and to want to love is to love. We find that we don’t love enough. How true that is! We will never love enough.

We will never love enough... There's a wistfulness to this statement; a sadness. Here, in just five words are contained all our human frailties and limitations, our resistances, challenges, hardened hearts and missed opportunities. Here is realism; here, too, we could be tempted to even more withholding and half measures: we will never love enough - so why bother trying?

But here, too, is a summons! - as joyful as it is challenging and demanding. We will never love enough, because we can always love more. We can always love more widely, and with more tenderness and passion; with more freedom and generosity. And concretely, we can always do more, serve and offer more, in order to demonstrate, and increase, the depth and breadth of our love.

We will never love enough... Because we can never love as much and as unconditionally as God does, and as Jesus showed us. And we will never love enough, because we are called to imitate a Love which never says 'enough'... Because we too are called to love without limits, and without end...