Love and Sacrifice

Fifty years from now, nobody, including yourself, will care if you were hungry or full today, if you were happy or sad, if you were bored or entertained.  “In the evening of life, you will be judged on love,” said St. John of the Cross.  What if we decided to use how loving we were today as a means to “keep score”?  What kind of life would we be living?  Certainly, it is often difficult to say "yes" to love, and to sort out the conflicting demands that love repeatedly imposes upon us.  Nevertheless, it is by a willingness to accept the obligation to concretize love, that willingness to take on the difficulties, the sacrifice, that real love demands, that we become something more than ourselves.