Sometimes I wish I could watch your faces as you read these brief words each day during Advent, but you readers are all spread out across the country and even around the world. Let’s reveal the next episode in “God’s Love Story.”
You may remember that my mother was from Ireland. She came over to the United States on a speaking tour but when the tour was done, she found it difficult to return to her family in Dublin due to the dangers of U-boats in the north Atlantic. The Irish embassy encouraged her to find a job – any job – in this country until the stress of the war calmed down. She met my father that year.
March 3, 1941…continued: My father wrote, “[Joan] would like to go back to Ireland to be with her family awhile and get things ready [for the wedding], but she’s afraid if she goes back, there is danger that she may not be able to get away again, not to mention the danger of bombers and submarines…As you can imagine, this has been most disrupting to my work…”
My parents didn’t want to risk being apart. They wanted no European war to prevent them from being with the person they loved, nothing to separate them like the Atlantic ocean. Even the possibility that they would be apart made it hard for Dad to focus on his studies.
Remember St. Paul’s words in Rom. 8:38-39. Paul assured the believers in Rome that “neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, no height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, nothing shall ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” No wars, no U-boats, no bombs…nothing can separate us from God’s love.
What problems lie ahead of you today? No difficulty you face will ever be able to come between you and the God who loves you!
