Paul does not say we work up love for God through spiritual discipline. He says love is shed abroad — poured out, flooded in — by the Holy Ghost. The love that the Spirit produces is not manufactured by us; it is given to us. We become vessels through which divine love flows, not factories that produce it through effort. This is why fruit is the right metaphor. You cannot force a tree to produce apples by stapling them to its branches. The fruit grows because life flows from the root. The Spirit's love is exactly like that — it wells up in us from a source that is not us.

In July 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Nazi procedure was merciless: ten men from the same block would be selected to die by starvation as collective punishment. The ten were chosen at random and marched out. Among them was a Polish army sergeant named Franciszek Gajowniczek, who cried out in the ranks — "My wife! My children!" From the lineup, a Polish Catholic priest named Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward quietly. He stood before the SS commandant Karl Fritzsch and said simply, "I am a Catholic priest. I am old. Let me take his place. He has a wife and children." Fritzsch stared at him for a long moment — then agreed. Kolbe took the sergeant's place in the starvation bunker. For two weeks he led the other condemned men in prayer and hymns, comforting them as they died one by one around him. Guards later reported that his cell was the only one in that block from which no screaming came. He was the last one alive. The Nazis finally ended it with a lethal injection. Gajowniczek survived the war, and every year until his death at age 93, he returned to Auschwitz to kneel where Kolbe had died. When asked what Kolbe's sacrifice meant to him, the old soldier wept and said, "I could not understand it then. I still cannot fully understand it now. It was love I had no category for." That is exactly what Paul describes — a love shed abroad by the Spirit that exceeds all human explanation.

Prayer: Holy Spirit, flood our hearts with the love of God. Where we have only managed polite tolerance, give us real love. Where we have loved only those who love us back, stretch us toward the Kolbe-kind of love — love that gives without counting the cost. Amen.