This month’s liturgical anchor is Pentecost—a solemnity that seldom carries much weight in our parishes. Festive tables aren’t set, families don’t gather, retail opportunities don’t abound. What is it about the coming of the Holy Spirit we don’t get?

John Joseph, who received the 2001 Catholic Campaign for Human Development’s Cardinal Bernardin New Leadership Award for his race relations and antipoverty work while a student at Ole Miss, said in accepting his award, “Our love for others demonstrates that we recognize God’s love for us.”

Back in high school—and who knows, maybe in high schools even today—love was defined by carving two sets of initials into a locker, a tree, or a park bench. I had a friend who preferred the less permanent approach: She wrote them in ink on the rubber part of her sneakers.

“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.

One day I came home from high school to find a shiny new white garbage truck in our driveway where dad always parked his car. It had our family name painted on both sides.

My cousin has decided to become a cop. She’s 39 years old, and the cutoff to enter the academy is 40. She smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish before she decided to make this startling career shift. Now she runs three miles a day, lifts weights twice a week, and lives a Puritan existence.

When I was a kid my brother Pat and I used to get in arguments with the neighbor kids. We went to Catholic school and they went to public school, and often the rhetoric devolved into snide comments about Catholics vs. “publics.”

“All you need is love,” one of the most celebrated pop singles ever—written by the Beatles in 1967—said little more than: “All you need is love. Love. Love is all you need. Love. Love. Love.” Think about all of the songs and poems written throughout the history of our human family.

In prayer we ask for the grace to obey God’s command to love, and for mercy when we do not.

We, too, should shape our cross in suffering for one another as the Savior taught us; in giving our lives for those very ones who would take it from us, as he so lovingly did; in spending ourselves for our neighbor, not only in agreeable things, but also in those which are painful and disagreeable . . . .