Love Is a Verb: What Mark's Parents Got Wrong (and Right) About Putting God First

Many years ago, Mark's father shared a conversation he and Mark's mother had early in their marriage. His mother had told his father that she loved God most, him second, and herself third. He'd told her the opposite: he loved her most, God second, and himself third. He said he was even a little hurt that she didn't love him as much as he loved her.

It was an absurd conversation between two newlyweds, and Mark can't remember why his father shared it. It stuck with him because he felt that they were both trying to express something true and generous... but they were both missing the point.

In this Sunday's Gospel presents Jesus tells his disciples that anyone who loves father, mother, son, or daughter more than him is not worthy of him. That's probably what Mark's mother based her statement on.

But it's a passage that can sound cold, even jarring, as it did to Mark's father. To understand it, we need to think about the meaning of love.

Jesus isn't conducting a survey of our emotional attachments. He isn't asking us to feel more affection toward him than toward the people sleeping down the hall. He is talking about how we love: love as action, as service, as vocation.

In our marriage vocation, we love God by loving our spouses the way God calls us to love them: by willing their good, concretely and consistently, in the ordinary friction of a shared life. Dawna's grandfather used to fondly recall how he'd be working hard in the hot sun on their ranch, when his wife would suddenly show up with a container of cold water. Knowing he would be thirsty and wanting him to drink enough water, his wife was there with a tiny act of great love.

Mark's parents, by contrast, were asking the wrong question.

Love and Synchrony

Love, says the Church, is willing the good of the other as other. We need to do what is best for them even when it requires a sacrifice from us.

There is research that resonates with this teaching. For example, psychologist Barbara Fredrickson found that love, at the level of lived experience, is not primarily a feeling we carry around. It is generated in specific moments of genuine connection: moments of mutual care, shared attention, and what she calls "synchrony" between two people.

Her studies showed that micro-moments of real connection, repeated over time, predict not just relationship satisfaction but measurable improvements in physical health and psychological resilience.

This has practical implications for our marriages that are somewhat humbling. The quality of your marriage turns out to be built less by how you feel about your spouse on a given afternoon and more by what you actually do: whether you notice what they need, whether you respond, whether you show up in small ways with consistency.

Gratitude Notes

Here's an exercise to help you build love through appreciations of gratitude for the everyday acts of love you do for one another:

• Each spouse keeps a small notebook or a note on their phone.

• Once a day, they write down one specific thing their spouse did that day that served them or the family, something they might ordinarily let pass without comment.

• Then they express their gratitude in different ways:

  • a post-it note

  • a message written on the mirror in dry erase marker

  • a text message by phone (maybe with a fun emoji or meme attached)

  • a note under their pillow

• Have fun thinking of creative ways to express your gratitude

At a primary level, this exercise builds relationship by making the giver feel seen, and acknowledged. And that's important.

But the practice is also internal. You are training yourself to notice what your spouse is actually doing for you and for your household.

Research on gratitude by psychologists has consistently shown that the act of noticing and recording positive contributions, even privately, shifts perception and increases relational warmth over time.

Couples who practice deliberate gratitude and explicit attention to each other's needs report significantly higher satisfaction over time. The mechanism is simple: being seen by your spouse, and choosing to see them, reinforces the bond that sustains a marriage through difficulty.

The Point Mark's Parents Were Reaching For

We think Mark's parents were both trying to say: you matter to me, and so does something larger than us.

That instinct was right. A marriage rooted in something beyond the two of you, a shared sense of meaning and purpose, is more resilient than one that depends entirely on feeling alone.

But it only works if you understand that we love God first not by ranking him on an emotional hierarchy, but by loving our spouse the way we are called to: with attention, with will, with a small cup of cold water on a hot day.