Dear Emily in Christ,

Your question is very interesting because of how you express it, and it is going to take standing back from it a little to give a good and useful answer. 

On the surface yes, a person can feel like they are in love with Christ. But I hope I don't offend you if I say that is not at all what matters - the feeling, I mean. Much more important and the only thing that matters is to actually love him. The big difference is this, when we ask ourselves if we feel like we love Christ we focus our attention on the feelings we have inside us, and which by nature are subjective and fickle. But when we put aside our feelings and ask ourselves if we really do love Christ we stop looking inside ourselves, and we can only find the answer by examining our actions and asking ourselves, do those actions please him, do I do them for him, do they show he is at the center of my life, and - very importantly - do I persevere in them even when my feelings are not helping and sometimes the opposite?

It may be easier to see this in an example. It is frustratingly easy to feel like we love Christ because for some reason we feel good when we do religious things (go to Mass, spend some time in Adoration, etc...) and at the same time to be an unsupportable egotist when it comes to our dealings with our parents or siblings, or to just love to gossip and tear our neighbor to shreds in the process. We can easily feel holy and even a little smug when we see that we do things others don't (as in the Pharisee and the tax-collector, "I do all the proper fasting, I give tithes, I do all my prayers.") and then turn around and despise them for it ("not like that man over there..."). But we know that's not what Christ would do. So if we don't do what he tried to get us to do (and he set the bar much higher than avoiding conflict or gossip, he told us that he came to serve and to save by giving his life for us, and we should do the same).  So, as long as we focus on our warm and fuzzy feelings we will be liable to make the mistake of thinking we love Christ for the simple reason we feel like we do, and all the time be saying with our actions quite the opposite.

On top of that, our feelings change. One day you can feel fantastic and enthused because everything seems to be going your way, and the next you can be down and dejected because your friends make fun of you and your beliefs.

So, if the feelings are not important, what is? Love. Real love. 

Love is not a feeling, although it is often packaged in feelings when we first become aware of it. You really love someone when you actually give yourself to that person, when you willingly make that person the center of your life and you would do anything for him. Just like Christ loved us. You truly can say you love when you are faithful to that first impulse of giving yourself and do it over and over, in good times and bad, in sickness and health, it difficulty and ease, all through your life.

If we focus on our feelings it would be quite possible to say, for example, I feel like more happens inside me when I contemplate nature than when I go to Mass, I don't get anything out of Mass, so instead of going on Sunday I'll take a stroll in a park or climb a mountain. Or, I don't get anything out of Mass because of the way the priest says it, so I won't go unless it is said exactly the way I like it. Lots of people say these things, but does it please or displease Christ if I avoid eating at the table of his sacrifice? Will his life be in me if I don't eat his body and drink his blood? So our feelings are very poor guides when it comes to living Christ's life within us and telling if we love him. They simply are not a major factor. When they are favorable they make the expression of our love easier, when they are adverse they help us see more clearly if we love the feeling of love or the other person. We have to accept that sometimes the will be a help, and sometimes a hindrance, and as they arise we need to deal with them accordingly.

To love (both to show our love and to grow in it) we need to do the things Christ would have us do. And do them out of love, when we feel good doing them and also when we feel rotten. 

And now here is a wonderful thing that many forget: when we are faithful to our love even if the feelings are not there, and it is difficult but I still act out of love and do what I know I should if I loved, we enter into a whole new level of feelings that comes from the satisfaction of knowing we are faithful to our love. This is the joy the world cannot take away from us. This is why the persecutors could never understand why the martyrs went to their deaths full of hope. Just like Jesus himself told us, "the joy I give you no-one will take from you."