Love and Life

"It seems to me that love can substitute for a long life. Jesus takes no account of time, since there is none in heaven. He must take account only of love." - St. Terese of Lisieux, in Two Sisters in the Spirit by Hans Urs von Balthasar


Thinking of the brevity of some of the lives of the saints (Terese only lived to be 24), I got to thinking, maybe some people burn so brightly with love for God that they burn out the wick of their lives early, while others of us sputter along. God's grace gives us long lives so we can at least return some of his love to him, however meager. Not a hard and fast rule, I know, but there have been so many holy people (canonized and not), that died young (Pier Giorgio, virgin martyrs, and others whose stories I know but names I can't remember), but there have been so many that you just wonder if maybe they just "burned out", in a very good, heavenly way.