Irresistible Love

"The cost of such a radical response to Jesus is already in view when Mark prefaces the call of the first disciples with the notice that John has been arrested. But like impulsive lovers who commit themselves to one another while still wrapped in their initial mutual infatuation, a compelling love causes disciples to follow Jesus instantly. Just as a couple grows into love, and learns the costly self-surrender it takes to make that love continue to flourish, so too disciples learn the deeper conversion demanded as they grow in their radical love affair with the Holy One. It is then not so much the threat of destruction that moves us to convert our ways, but an irresistible love that turns our hearts."

Sr. Barbara E. Reid, O.P., America magazine, Jan. 19-26, 2009

Give me, oh God, irresistible love.
Seduce me, yes, let loose a heedless flush of the skin;
Make my hairs stand on their end from within,
Heating up and slowing down my breath
With every breath you blow upon my skin.

Make haste to make me less chaste.
Let me love you all the time.
Let me love you like there was no time to lose.
Let me love you like I had to lie about it.
The truth, come from my eyes, will never let them doubt it.

We won't have to fantasize or tantalize.
We'll grow down and get up with it.
Let us give the gossips a scandal to handle,
As you give me a bath and I loosen your thong
We will prove it is right when they say it is wrong,
How I warm you and need you and drink you -- feed from you,
As through me you think and you drink and you feed,
Together we'll take all the world to the top
As we bless and we bare and we bleed,
And complete in our death the way that we lived.
Give me, oh God, irresistible love.