Gospel Reflection 20070527
The self-seeking person eventually feels dead inside.
Collective work means working together. At times, this requires sacrifice and a delay of personal gratification. Your talents and gifts are too great to be used just for yourself. When you think only of yourself, your happiness is only for the moment, but when you make the concerns of others your own, your happiness lasts a lifetime. - Bishop James P. Lyke OFM
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The Powerful Gifts of the Holy Spirit
May 27, 2007
Pentecost Sunday
Gospel
Jn 20:19-23
On the evening of that first day of the week,
when the doors were locked, where the disciples were,
for fear of the Jews,
Jesus came and stood in their midst
and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.
The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them,
“Receive the Holy Spirit.
Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them,
and whose sins you retain are retained.”
Environmentalists preach to us about the need to tap the renewable resources of the universe. The non-renewable coal and oil will give out some day.
The renewable sun and wind is virtually inexhaustible. Pentecost is a day for spiritual environmentalists. It tells us to stop relying on the non-renewable coal and oil of our wasted lives, our futile searches for satisfactions that do not satisfy. Stop depending on our self exhausting pursuits of trifles that promise to fill us (and fulfill us), but leave us empty instead — like the empty hole of a plundered mine. Spiritual environmentalists, the joyful messengers of Pentecost, summon us to tap into the exuberant and ever renewable resource of the Holy Spirit. Open to the power of the Spirit, filled with spiritual gifts, we will live in a constant state of renewal. Exuberance will replace exhaustion. What are some of those gifts? Understanding. Knowledge. Counsel. Fortitude. Wisdom. Fear of the Lord. And many others. These gifts are the food for the soul, renewable sources of interior energy that bring us totally alive. We are not starved for information. In fact information is choking us just as toxic wastes pollute our physical environment. We are starved for insight and wisdom and meaning. Something to renew us.
On this glorious Pentecost, turn to the renewable resources of the soul — the gifts of the Holy Spirit — a power source for our souls.
Praise the Holy Spirit on this feast of Pentecost. Rejoice in the Holy Spirit’s unending renewable sources of personal growth and happiness. Ask God for more of His sun and wind so that His tumultuous energy may power us to live satisfying lives and be able to share them with others.
I suspect that some of you parents can relate to this story. It seems that it was a day like today, that is, Sunday morning, and a mother hurries into her son’s bedroom and speaks agitatedly at the sleeping bundle. “Look,” she cries, “it’s Sunday. Time to get up. Time to get up and go to church. Get up!” the son mumbles from under the covers, “I don’t want to go.” “What do you mean, “I don’t want to go”? responds the mother. “That’s silly. Now get up and get dressed and go to church.” He says, “No, I don’t want to go and I’ll give you two reasons why not.” He sits up in the bed and continues. “First, I don’t like them and second, they don’t like me. ” The mother replies, “Now that’s just plain nonsense. You’ve got to go to church and I’ll give you two reasons why you must. First, you’re 51 years old and, second you’re the pastor!”
Ah, first surprise, then laughter. Such is the basis of today’s feast of Pentecost. The disciples were hiding. They were hiding in fear behind closed and locked doors, shutting out the rest of the world which was hostile, persecuting and terrifying. They felt better huddled together in isolation planning what to do next, where to go.
And then a surprise! Into their isolation Jesus comes. Through closed doors he walks. Past locks he breaks in. surprise first, surely, but just as surely, there must have been laughter, at first nervous and with hesitation but afterwards long and loud as the impact of their friends presence sank in. I’m not sure they would have laughed so long and hard had they known what the friend would ask of them, but for the moment, they rejoiced.
What he would ask, of course, was what the mother in our story asked: get out of bed, get out of your isolation and fear, and go to church—to the assembly, to the world, and announce the Good News. They too are correct to protest, We don’t like them and they don’t like us—that’s why they were hiding. But the answer they get is this: you’re thirty or forty years old and you’re the pastors, the shepherds of a needy flock, the bearers of the gospel, the announcers of salvation and forgiveness. You must go, you have a mission.
There is a delightful story about a mother who bought a ticket to a concert by Ignace Padrewski, the great Polish pianist. She took her five-year-old son with her, hoping the experience would encourage him in his own young efforts at music.
She was delighted to see how close to the stage their seats were. Then she met an old friend and got so involved talking with her that she failed to notice that her son had slipped away to do some exploring.
When eight o’clock arrived, the lights dimmed, the audience hushed to a whisper, and the spotlight came on. Only then did the woman see her five-year-old son on the stage, sitting on the piano bench, innocently picking out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
She gasped in total disbelief. But before she could retrieve her son. Paderewski walked onto the stage. Walking over to the piano, he whispered to the boy, “Don’t stop! Keep playing!”
Then leaning over the boy, Paderewski reached out his left hand and began to fill in the bass. A few seconds later he reached around the other side of the boy, encircling him, and added a running obbligato.
Together, the great maestro and the tiny five-year-old mesmerized the audience with their playing. When they finished the audience broke into thunderous applause.
Years later almost all those present forgot the pieces that Paderewski played that night, but no one forgot “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
That image of the great maestro and the tiny five year old at the piano makes a beautiful image of the Holy Spirit and the Church. It makes a beautiful image of how the Holy Spirit unites with the Church to make beautiful music.
Going back to that image we see that the boy resembles the disciples. When Jesus departed from their midst, they were like spiritual children. Their knowledge of God and how to spread God’s kingdom was terribly deficient. It was like the little boy’s knowledge of music.
And, of course, the great Polish maestro resembles the Holy Spirit coming upon the disciples encircling them with love, whispering encouragement to them and transforming their feeble human efforts into something beautiful.
There’s a tremendous lesson here.
We look at the world and see so many problems that need to be addressed. We also look at our talents and see how inadequate they are in the face of all these problems. It is here that we need to recall the image of the little boy and Paderewski.
Musically, the little boy’s skill was minimal. But Paderewski built upon it and turned it into something beautiful—something that completely mesmerized the sophisticated audience that gathered in the hall that night. In a similar way, the Holy Spirit can take whatever we have—no matter how small—build upon it, and transform it into something powerful and beautiful.
This is the good news contained in today’s scripture readings. This is the good news that we celebrate on this feast of Pentecost.
It is the good news that Jesus has sent upon his Church, the promised Holy Spirit.
We are not alone; the Holy Spirit is leaning over us, taking our small contribution, and transforming it into something we never dreamed possible.
We may not like them, and they may not like us, but we are called by the Holy Spirit like the disciples to get out of bed and go to church, get into the world and with the help of the Holy Spirit, make beautiful music.
Often we hear about the Holy Spirit but seldom do people speak about the presence of God, the Holy Spirit in everyday life. Why is that? Is God the Holy Spirit active in our individual lives? Is the Holy Spirit active in our communities?
My answer is yes God can be active in our lives and in our communities if we are open to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Often I am asked to explain the powerful gifts of the Holy Spirit. I like to use this illustration: take a glass of milk. Drink from it. God made milk wholesome. God made milk good for the body. We are like milk. God made each of us good, in fact very good, according to Genesis. We receive the Holy Spirit at our Baptism. I then pour chocolate syrup into the milk. This chocolate syrup is like the Holy Spirit, which is poured into our life at Baptism. Holding up the glass I taste the milk. And comment that it still tastes the same and looks the same. I then ask the question. What needs to happen? Someone always responds that it needs to be stirred up. I then stir up the chocolate until we now have chocolate milk. I then taste it and comment that life is now sweeter, looks different. I prefer chocolate milk to white milk.
So how do we stir up the Holy Spirit in our life?
(Before the Spirit is stirred up)
I take a blank paper and draw a large circle on it. I then put myself in the center of the circle by writing "ME" and inside the circle I add things like, money, power prestige, possessions, sports, friends, family, etc. I decide how I will spend my time, my money. How I will be with my friends, my family, how I play sports, How I like power, prestige, and possessions. After all I have the right to choose.
(How to stir up the Spirit)
I take another piece of blank paper and draw a circle. This time I put a cross in the center, which represents Christ. I then put the same items in the circle, which were in the first circle. This time I ask Jesus how I should spend my time and my money. How I should act with my friends, family, sports. I ask Jesus what to do with power, prestige, and possession.
What I have found in doing this is that my life is simpler. That the Holy Spirit can now use me to give the gifts to the people God loves so deeply. I find that there is power in my life to love when I couldn’t love before.
If you want to have a sweeter, greater tasting life put Jesus at the center of every decision you make. Put Jesus at the center of every relationship you have and I guarantee that you will experience the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Your life will never be the same with Jesus at the center.
I then ask the question: What would happen if we didn’t keep the chocolate stirred up? The obvious answer is that it would settle down to the bottom again. This is true with the spiritual gifts. If we don’t keep Jesus at the center of our life the power of the Holy Spirit will become dormant in our life and the gifts will diminish.
Today, let the Holy Spirit be stirred into faith action, just like the early believers filled with a boldness and conviction of truth.
Father Vince Dwyer says in his book Lift Your Sails, "The winds of God's grace are always blowing but we must make an effort to raise our sails." Our lives are a mixture of good and bad, of light and darkness, of courage and fear, of concern and indifference. But it is in the conflicting personalities we are that the Holy Spirit chooses to work. It is in our weakness that we find His strength and power. The Spirit works within our hearts transforming us and communicating to us a power beyond our own understanding. Without this indwelling of the Spirit we have no power to do what we are called to do.
Sometimes the presence of the Holy Spirit is difficult to grasp and we can only know of his work in our lives by the signs of His work seen in love, joy, peace and patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness, which are the fruits of His work. But for these signs to become a reality, as we sit upon our little boats struggling with the strong winds, tides and obstacles of life, we must make an effort to raise our sails.
The Holy Spirit is meant to be experienced as a driving force in our lives. And the fact that some of us may not experience this power is not because the Holy Spirit has not been given to us, but because we do not use or release the energy that is flowing into us from God's love. We must make the effort to raise our sails and to call upon the Holy Spirit in the words of the hymn, "Spirit of the Living God, Fall a fresh on us — fill us — mold us — shape us — use us..."
The Holy Spirit works in us as the Spirit worked in Jesus. We can recognize that we have allowed the Spirit to work in us to the extent we are like Jesus. To the extent that Jesus is truly Lord in our life! There are times when we feel our life is empty and that we have allowed our lives to develop in ways that lack courage, strength and direction. Our strength comes from living in harmony with the Holy Spirit, for the winds of God's grace are always blowing. But we must make the effort to raise our sails and mount the sail of life firmly in the values Jesus taught.
It is difficult because many pressures move us away from the Spirit toward self-centered actions. Rather than respond to the Spirit, we often find ourselves responding to these pressures. We are all products and to some extent, victims of our culture which pushes materialistic satisfaction and self-achievement as chief means to happiness.
God's message is communicated to us in so many different ways, telling us He loves us and accepts us just as we are. It is a message that sometimes seems too good to be true; but it is! The winds of God's love are always blowing but we must make the effort to raise our sails.
We need one another. For it is in our faith community called Church the Spirit operates most powerfully to teach, to help, to transform, to bring us joy and peace. The Spirit has been given to us to continue the mission of Jesus. We know we have the power to do our task because He promised to be with us until the end of the world. No one person has all the gifts. No single person can bring about the dream of God for His world. But together as a community we have all the gifts necessary to spread the good news of God's love. Cardinal Bernadin wrote, "Jesus entrusted the task of transmitting and spreading the Gospel to the Apostles and their successors indeed to all of us who make up the Church." He says, "God's Spirit, present and active within the Church and within us, gives us the power to carry out the mission. God counts on us, yet we need not, in fact, must not count simply on ourselves. The Holy Spirit helps us, strengthens us, constantly gives positive results to our limited and imperfect efforts." The Cardinal concludes, "That's good news, indeed!"
In these times we recognize no church or community can survive very long unless it harnesses the tremendous variety of gifts large and small of all members. I pray that each of us has the trust and faith in the Holy Spirit to capture His love, His power, His presence and His peace. All we have to do is raise our sails.
In case you don't know...
...these Gospel Reflections are compliations of homilies found on the Internet... most all of the words are not my own...
Gospel Reflection 20070520
The good you do and the good you speak form who you are.
The ultimate question to strengthen self-esteem is, "Who am I to God?" No one knows you as God does. No one loves you as God does. God created you. You are made in the image of your Creator. This is an awesome image and it means that you are much more wonderful than you can imagine.
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Seventh Sunday of Easter
That They May All Be One
Gospel
Jn 17:20-26
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying:
“Holy Father, I pray not only for them,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me.
And I have given them the glory you gave me,
so that they may be one, as we are one,
I in them and you in me,
that they may be brought to perfection as one,
that the world may know that you sent me,
and that you loved them even as you loved me.
Father, they are your gift to me.
I wish that where I am they also may be with me,
that they may see my glory that you gave me,
because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Righteous Father, the world also does not know you,
but I know you, and they know that you sent me.
I made known to them your name and I will make it known,
that the love with which you loved me
may be in them and I in them.”
It’s the last supper...Jesus will soon be arrested, then sentenced to death and executed. So John records for us his last prayer, the last words Jesus would speak in front of those who will be entrusted to spread his message. Oh, Jesus prayed later; he spoke words on the cross but this is his final prayer in public. We are familiar with what comes later; we see what happens in the garden, in the court, on Calvary but on this seventh Sunday after Easter with the Ascension and Pentecost just around the corner we need to realize that this is the son of God praying folks; we need to understand it.
“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word.” That’s us folks, just before died he prayed for all of us whose sins keep him dangling forever between earth and sky for surely the God outside of time still dies for us as we run through life forgetting him, forgetting his love for us, forgetting what he has prepared for us.
And what was his prayer for us? That we would be one even as he is one with the Father. That we would be united with each other in a personal relationship, a relationship that would require us to be the other, to feel with the other, to suffer with the other... Real lovers do that don’t they? Deacon Stephen, the first martyr, did it as he breathed his last forgiving those who had stoned him, perhaps looking into the eyes of the young Saul who would some day share the same vision that Stephen died looking at, a vision of the risen Lord. Jesus wants us to experience the love of the Father through loving Him and loving each other. That's what he means by being one: that we, who count Jesus as our Lord and savior, are to be one with Him and one with each other. That we should be like God in our loving. We should be one in the Spirit.
And he gives to us the glory that the Father has given Him. He says that. But what is that glory that the Father has given Him? Is it the glory of power and possession? Is it a comfortable life and the adulation of many? Of course not. It's the glory of faithfulness, of discipline, of healing and serving. It's the sign of one who loves enough to take up a cross for those who are loved: the missionary in Central America, the social worker in the mean streets of the wealthiest country in the world, the doctor caring for the diseased in the African war zone, the mother who raises her children alone, the neighbor who brings food when you're sick. It's all those visible signs of love around us that speak out to those who have not accepted the message of the savior. They will know we are Christians by our love, won't they?
Were the teachings of Jesus Christ passed on by armies? No, they were passed on by those who saw the vision of Jesus at the right hand of the Father? By those who kept their eyes on the prize, eternal life. By those who knew that we are learning here, learning to love as perfectly as Jesus did. And so if we listen to the words of Acts and Revelation and John today we need to renew in ourselves the actions that show to the world our beliefs. God prayed for us before he died and he told us we would rise again with him. Is his teaching the focus of our days? Do we talk to our broker more than we talk to God? Is it obvious to those whom we work with that we live as God taught? Do we hide what we believe? Do we say I'm Catholic but stand for nothing Catholic? Do we understand that our culture has lost its focus as it careens along aborting and executing? Do we stand solidly on the side of providing health care for all? Do we aid the lepers of our society when they call out for help? Is it possible for us to be called religiously idealistic? Or would that embarrass us? All of us need to look at our lives today. Our Lord and Savior prayed that we would love one another as the persons of the Trinity loved one another. Is our behavior such that our neighbors would look at us and say, "See how those Christians love one another?" If not, why not? That's the challenge today.
Another area we can examine is internal. Sin corrodes love and turns us inward toward ourselves. We grow increasingly selfish. The world tirelessly promotes freedom as license to do what ever you want. This turns us into slaves to our passions. How free am I to say no to sin in my life? How often is self-indulgence to whims and senses what I prefer? Sin creates an interior disharmony, an interior fracture between what my conscience presents as God’s will and how I am actually living. If we love God, we will obey him. Love apart from such obedience is an illusion, a lie, and if my relationship with Christ is not right, then all others rest on shifting sand.
Love Suffers and Endures
Far away places with strange sounding names have once again grabbed the Catholic imagination and sent numerous Catholics globe-trotting in search of the sacred. We Catholics love our special times and places. We are constantly on the watch for the revelation of God in human history and within his good creation. We Catholics believe that grace is everywhere. All things have the potential to speak of the wonders of God. Our entire sacramental and liturgical traditions rest on the constant and pervasive presence of grace.
From the setting sun to the word of a fellow human, there are limitless ways of being surprised by grace. While we do not want to deny the importance of visiting shrines or making pilgrimages to holy places, we must not forget the wisdom of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz: "There is no place like home." We do not have to go over the rainbow and down the yellow brick road in search of the Emerald City or the New Jerusalem. If we can't find peace in Kansas, then maybe we never lost it or it was an illusion and not the real thing.
In a most dramatic way Jesus tells us that revelation is an ongoing reality. And each of us is an instrument for revealing God! Consider these words of Jesus: "To them I have revealed your name, and I will continue to reveal it so that your love for me may live in them, and I may live in them." What is this name that Jesus reveals to the disciples? What is the name of the Father in which we are called to pray? What is the name we are called to reveal? Jesus reveals the name of the Father to be LOVE. Yes, LOVE. It is the suffering, enduring love made visible by Jesus on the Cross. The very glory of God the Father given to Jesus is now extended to the faith community through the indwelling of the Paraclete. The mutual love of community members for one another continues to reveal the name and the glory of the Father. The very same love which is shared by the Father and Jesus is shared with the disciples. Along with the indwelling of the Paraclete, the Trinitarian love is at work in the community.
The revelation of God's name as LOVE does not come easily. There is a dear price to pay for costly grace. Our 1st reading from Acts provides us with the courageous example of Stephen. Stephen told the hostile crowd what he saw: "an opening in the sky, and the Son of Man standing at God's right hand." Stephen was taken outside the city and stoned.
Stephen refuses to return hatred for hatred. Stephen will not meet the fear and violence of those who kill with his own violence and fear. The glory of God is revealed as LOVE through the death of Stephen. For as death draws near, Stephen proclaims the words of LOVE: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."
Suffering love is also a forgiving love. This is no romantic, sentimental "love" but the Lord pledged love of a mature faith.
To reveal God's name as suffering, forgiving LOVE is to live by hope. The book of Revelation presents one of John's visions in which those who love will be reunited with Jesus. Love yields the gift of eternal life. This eternal life is not to be received when we die or at some unknown future time. Eternal life is offered to us now. When we love as Jesus loved; when we profess our faith in Jesus as the Son of God; and when we open our hearts to the Paraclete we have already passed from death to life. Jesus gives life to all who come to him in faith.
Revelation does not take place only in distant lands. Revelation is richer than a fixed list of doctrines and dogmas. Revelation is the self-disclosure of God whose name is LOVE. This God's self-revelation reached its zenith in the person of Jesus and his loving act of the Cross. We are called to continue the revelation and to be the disciples who make visible God's love here and now.
There are times when we will be confronted with violence and hostility for telling about Jesus. So be it. But let us never forget the words of Stephen: "Lord do not hold this sin against them."
Gospel Reflection 20070513
Strong self-esteem grows from seeing yourself as God sees you.
God created you so special that the Holy Spirit lives in you. The Holy Spirit is the life-giving marrow of the skeleton of self-esteem that is built within you.
Being a Catholic takes time.
It takes time to grow into a mature Catholic. One who has grown through various stages of faith: an experienced faith (learned in one's family), an affiliative faith (unquestioned sense of belonging), a searching faith (seeking answers to challenging questions), and an owned faith (one who personally chooses to belong). You may have been baptized into the faith as an infant, but you will remain a Catholic only if you grow into it.
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Make Me Your Holy Temple
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Gospel
Jn 14:23-29
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Whoever loves me will keep my word,
and my Father will love him,
and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.
Whoever does not love me does not keep my words;
yet the word you hear is not mine
but that of the Father who sent me.
“I have told you this while I am with you.
The Advocate, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you everything
and remind you of all that I told you.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
You heard me tell you,
‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’
If you loved me,
you would rejoice that I am going to the Father;
for the Father is greater than I.
And now I have told you this before it happens,
so that when it happens you may believe.”
The Gospel of St. John today tells us much about the early Church and about the Church of today. Actually they are one and the same. In the Gospel, Jesus is preparing His apostles for His Ascension and departure from them in His human form. He tells them that He has not been able to teach them all that He wanted in the three short years they were together. However, He will send them the Holy Spirit who will enlighten them and teach them the complete message from the Father. What they discovered on Pentecost was that they were to be the instruments of the Holy Spirit and the very means of teaching the Father's message and spreading it to the whole world. They were and we are the Church and the Church is the instrument of the Holy Spirit alive in the World today.
The Church, through its teaching authority which comes from Christ, continues to proclaim the message of the Father to the World. When Jesus gave the Keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter, He entrusted to His Church that teaching authority. As the voice of the Holy Spirit on earth, the Church has the profound task of making Christ present in the World.
Jesus promised that although he was leaving, it would only be for a short time and then He would return. Some of his apostles misunderstood Him and believed that the Second Coming was to take place immediately. What they came to understand was that Jesus has returned to us in His Church, the Body of Christ.
Christ Knows We Need Reassurance.
It is scary when we learn that a loved one will be leaving us for an undetermined amount of time. We can think of the soldiers who go off to war and how hard it must be for their spouses and children to deal with the loneliness and uncertainties that naturally arise. Yet the good soldier assures them he will return, and he is confident that they will be strong and live upright lives. How hard it must have been for the apostles when Christ told them he would be leaving them. They had left everything to follow him, and now it seemed as if they would be alone. Christ knew how heavy their hearts were, so he assured the apostles that he needed to leave in order that he and the Father could send the Holy Spirit into their hearts. The Holy Spirit enlightens our hearts too, as he enlightened the hearts of the apostles.
We Should Rejoice Because Christ Is Going Home.
Christ is the Prince of Peace. He sought to uplift the apostles, who were dragged down by sadness and fear that they would be left alone in the world. Christ tells them, and he tells us, that they should rejoice because he is going home. Christ wants us to rejoice not only because he is going home to the Father, but also because if we keep his word, he and the Father will make their dwelling in us. Their abode will be in our hearts. He wants us to trust the Holy Spirit who will give us the clarity of thought and the strength to live Christ’s teachings coherently.
What is our role in this Divine plan? We need to be aware of the role of the Church and its teaching authority in the world. We must accept this and see in it the work of the Holy Spirit, acting through the Church. Most importantly, we must be aware of our call to be the voice, the hands, the eyes and ears of Christ in the World today. Who is to make Christ present if not you and me? This is not a job that we can pass along to anyone else. We cannot expect the Government to do it, nor some social service agency. It’s our job, yours and mine. When we receive the Eucharist today, we become one with Christ in a very special way. He calls us to take Him out of this church and into the World. Pope John Paul II, said that our Faith does not come alive until we share it with another. Let us make our Faith alive today!
Can you possibly imagine the religious world of the near East when Jesus came and turned it upside down? When He took many of the age-old beliefs and traditions of the Jewish people and supplanted them with a version of His own? When He took the Old Covenant and revamped it as the New Covenant? We think that the "changes" that took place at the time of the Second Vatican Council were earth shaking; they were nothing compared to the revolution that Christ brought about.
Jesus' New Covenant. As the gospel reminds us, this New Covenant would be one of "love", pure and simple. "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him." All the Law would be summed up in the two great commands "Love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself." This was to be the life of the follower of Christ from then to the end of time.
It sounds so simple. But what does it mean? One of the better definitions of "love" that I have found is that of St. Thomas Aquinas. "Love is the inclination to something good." It will depend on what the person perceives as "good" as to what his love will be. If he considers money good and sets out to obtain money, he has a love for money. If she looks at chocolate as good, and reaches out for chocolate, she has a love of chocolate. There are a great number of things that one can look upon as "good" and hence there are many different kinds of love that he can have. It stands to reason that the greatest love of all would be that which directs us, inclines us, to the greatest good. And since the greatest good, as the theologians would say, the "Summum Bonum", is God, the greatest love we have must be for God. Which is why the first and greatest commandment is "Love God above all things."
After that our love will be defined by what we are inclined to accept as greater good or lesser good. The love of a man for his wife, his children should come ahead of his love for his golf game. But, sad to say, some become so mixed up that they will elevate that which is not an important "good" at all, so that it, in their thinking, becomes more important than it really is. And into life comes trouble.
In fact, as the Lord puts it, the Second Commandment is like to the first, "Love your neighbor as yourself." So, the way we rate our love is how we rate our neighbors. The neighbor that is closest and nearest and most important and most "good" must receive our greatest love. The mother and father must receive the love of the child. The child must receive the love of the parent. The wife that of the husband, and the husband that of the wife. And so on down the list of our neighbors - some are much more important than others and, thereby, must receive the greater love from us.
What could be the greatest good that I would bring to my neighbor? Eternal happiness with our loving God. The reason why men and women marry is because they love each other. If their love is of the ultimate, it will be a desire to bring the greatest good to the one loved. Through marriage they will save their souls. The love of husband and wife should primarily include the desire to help the other achieve his/her immortal salvation, help him/her reach the happiness of heaven. That is why it so horrendous when those who should be loving each other become the cause or source of sin. How can one claim to love if he encourages the other to sin? How can young people considering marriage think they love each other when by or with the misuse or abuse of the beauty of sex they cause each other to sin? That is not love, it is sin! And sin is just the opposite of love; an inclination to something evil.
Of course it is sometimes difficult to discern what is the good and what is the evil. Which is why we must pray and think and seek advice to determine what is the good. So often we will take the easy way out. And because the Joneses are doing it, because this celebrity, this star, this athlete, this Miss America is doing it, we think it is proper for us to copy them. This is the coward's way out. The person who loves will try every way to make sure that good is being achieved. And if he loves, if she loves, it will be true good. Pray hard. Love God and love your neighbor. That's all that Jesus and the New Covenant asks.
Things really don't change much over the centuries, do they? Today we see problems existing in the Church. Some individuals place tremendous importance on minor things and miss the really important ones. Do you think that Jesus really cares if we bow, or kneel, or sit or stand? I know of a parish that recently went through a terrible conflict over what type of cross to hang over the altar. One group wanted this type, another wanted a different type. Hurtful words were spoken, charges of heresy were hurled back and forth. Some even left the parish for another and many still don't speak to each other. What a sad situation. We are like the Pharisees who placed so much importance on the external show of religion, but failed to have faith and love in their hearts. You know what Jesus thought of them. Our emphasis should be on faith and doing right, of following the teachings of Jesus to love God and our neighbor as ourselves.
Some of us just can't accept change, or have a very difficult time accepting it. We like to stay in our comfortable rut and just go from day to day, year to year doing the same old thing in the same old way. But change happens constantly. We could no more exist in the Holy Land of two thousand years ago than we could fly, nor could those people exist in our world. Things have changed tremendously in our own lifetime. The Second Vatican Council was called, just like that first Council, to solve problems in the Church. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the fathers of the Council took the bold steps of moving from a Counter-Reformation Church into a 20th Century Church and going back to the very roots of our Faith. Even though it’s been forty years since the Council, some among us still have a problem accepting the changes. But what changed? The Creed is still the same, the Sacraments are still the same, the Word of God is still the same. Jesus is still with us and the Holy Spirit guides the Church every moment.
Jesus, in St. John's Gospel, puts it very simply, "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him." We only need to follow Jesus, to live the Gospel message every day of our lives. He says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid." How can we be afraid if we truly believe that He is with us always, as He promised?
Today, as we leave this Eucharistic celebration, let us make resolution to put aside those trivial external things that seem to cause so much grief and concentrate on the one thing that matters - Love - for God and for neighbor
Our Gospel today teaches clearly the link between Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Apostles and the Church. The reading makes it plain that the truth Jesus teaches originates, not in Himself, but in the Father and will be unfolded gradually in its fullness to the Apostles by the Holy Spirit until the end of time. It is obedience to this truth alone which is the test of genuine love of Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit. Keeping Jesus' word means more than remembering it: it means doing it, making it one's own by free choices, obeying it. The redemption of humanity was won by Jesus, Himself "doing the truth," that is, obeying the Father, in His death and Resurrection. Those deeds of Jesus guarantee the eternal validity of His word and confer the power of the Holy Spirit upon it. It is that same word which the Apostles teach and preach today in the power of the Spirit; it is that same deed which is renewed, by virtue of the Spirit, in every sacrament celebrated and, to a different degree, in every deed of truth that is done. To do the truth is charity. Charity is always truthful, for charity is of God and God is the Truth.
The Bishops do not, then, as sinful human beings, develop or invent the doctrine of the faith. It is not made up as they go along. Cultural and historical contexts will require creativity in teaching the truth, but never in a way that compromises, limits or waters down the truth itself. If, and to the degree, the Bishops were to make it up, they simply would not be being faithful to Christ, to the Spirit or to the Father. Let me read a canonical text which sums up exactly what the Bishops are to do as leaders of the Church and doctors of the faith: "The Church, to which Christ the Lord has entrusted the deposit of faith so that, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, it might protect the revealed truth reverently, examine it more closely, and proclaim and expound it faithfully, has the duty and innate right, independent of any human power whatsoever, to preach the gospel to all peoples." The text continues: "It belongs to the Church always and everywhere to announce moral principles, even about the social order, and to render judgment concerning any human affairs insofar as the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls requires it."
How do we know that the Bishops are not making mistakes, leading us into error? The same question was asked of Christ when He was among us. Many questioned His authority and demanded signs, while ignoring those He performed. He infuriated those who made reference to Moses by telling them they had betrayed Moses. They were so conditioned by their historical and cultural contexts, and so adamant that Jesus should fit in to them, that the blazing clarity of Jesus' teachings only outraged them. Ultimately, Jesus could not appeal to their reason. Rather, He appealed to their willingness to believe Him on the basis of His word itself, or at least on the basis of the signs He gave. This same Jesus has given us the Apostles, endowed them with a fuller measure of the same Spirit who spoke through the prophets, promised them that He would remain always with them, that the Spirit would guarantee their teaching of His word from the powers of hell, confirmed their words by powerful deeds and assured them that the world would hate them as it hated Him. "He who hears you, hears me," He told them, because other than the Gospel of Christ, the Bishops and the Church Herself, have nothing else to say. Therefore, the certainty of the teaching of the Bishops does not proceed from them, but from the Trinitarian God. Ultimately, we receive and obey the teachings of the Bishops because we believe in Christ's faithfulness to His own Word and that Word He has entrusted to them for our salvation. That is how we know they do not lead us into error.
We may experience a certain annoyance with Jesus that He did not stay here Himself and talk to us all, instead of sending us these people. I wonder, however, even if Jesus in person were to teach us what the Church teaches us today, would we really listen or be convinced. Might we not rather ask Him to keep quiet? In our culture of opinions and opinionated ness, of claims, not only to genuine fundamental rights and freedoms, but also to other pseudo-rights and freedoms, we might treat Jesus as just another self-made preacher from the "religious right" or the "religious left," and dissect and reject His Gospel as being contrary to the Universal Declaration on Human Rights or to the Constitution! What is certain is that this kind of remark is already being made of our Bishops.
Clearly, the underlying question here is one of faith, a faith which is limitless trust in Christ Himself and in the utter certainty of His faithfulness to us. Either the Catholic Church is fundamentally one of the greatest scams of history or, with all Her problems and errors and crimes, She is the Bride to whom Christ remains faithful, through whom He gathers the human race to Himself notwithstanding the thick and thin of Her sins and her failures. Herein lies one important aspect of the Church's life: the contradiction between Her holiness as the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, and yet the presence within Her of individual sinners, including both you and me, and ordained and consecrated men and women. That contradiction rightly disappoints us. We look for holiness not in just some abstract, collective form, in the Church, but in the concrete men and women who share in Her life, especially those who lead. To combine two phrases often used at the time of the Reformation: the Church is always in need of reform because the Church is always at the same time holy and sinful. She is holy because of God; She is sinful because of us. While the Holy cannot condone the sin, the Holy does not abandon the sinner who repents. No one should be cast off because they sin; but neither should they be embraced because they sin. The father embraces the prodigal son because he has repented, not because he has sinned. No one should reject himself because he sins; rather, he should reject his sin because he loves himself. If God does not reject me, how can I reject myself? If God rejects my sin, how can I keep it and claim that I am also keeping His word? The contradiction in the Church does not come from Christ nor from what the Bishops teach in His Name; it comes from sin, and sin exists in the sinner, and all of us are sinners, all of us need repentance, all of us need the merciful embrace of the Father, each of us is the contradiction. Our pain at our leaders' sins and weaknesses may simply come from the fact that we yearn for a holiness in them which we don't see or feel in ourselves. "They are Christ for us," we say, "and Christ is sinless," so, we cry, "they should be sinless too!" At the same time, we know they are men, yet somehow secretly wish they were not, but some kind of angel or semi-divinity or reincarnation of Jesus. Such yearnings are understandable, but naturally they can lead to fantasy and, when the bubble bursts, to terrible disillusionment and anger. One minute we are in love with all they are and represent, the next we want nothing to do with the whole thing! How human, and how lovable, but how in need of a deeper faith and trust in God and of a deeper understanding of both the mystery of grace and the mystery of iniquity! When Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church, surely the sins of the clergy, the failures of pastors to lead and teach, the succumbing to the spirit of the world among priests, were also in His mind. But the center of our attention must not be an obsessive anger with these: rather it must be in a holy, defiant trust in the "gates of hell not prevailing," i.e., in the fidelity and invincibility of Christ's truth. Today's difficulties thus give us a strange opportunity to turn and to confide more deeply in Christ's own presence in the Church. He alone is the holy one and each of us in our own vocation is called to emulate that holiness, not least by forgiving the repentant sinner, in ourselves and in our neighbor, whoever that is.
There are matters of faith and morals in the life of the Church which form Her core: the creed contains many of them, although there are others, such as the natural moral law. These issues are ones about which the Church cannot err because Christ, as Creator and Redeemer, cannot err. There are other issues, in matters of faith and morals, where the Church's teaching is not definitive, at least not yet. These issues would not be core issues in the sense I have explained it, but, because the truth is a unity, they are nevertheless related to that core. On such issues, although it may be legitimate to disagree, the obligation of faith requires us to be and to remain open to the Church's direction. Because something is not taught as infallible does not mean we don't have to listen or develop an openness and willingness to accept what is taught. If I believe in Christ and love Him and His Church, the desire of charity in me should be to develop a culture of "yes," a willingness to learn if I do not yet understand, a willingness sometimes even to say yes without understanding at all. Vatican II describes this attitude of the believing Catholic as "the religious acceptance of the mind and of the will." On matters which clearly have nothing to do with the faith, or in which differing opinions are possible, there is no moral or religious obligation to adhere to what bishops are saying. This does not mean, however, that it is licit to do what is wrong in those cases and then blame the Church because "it did not tell me what to do." The Church teaches, as Christ teaches, not so as to substitute itself for the moral responsibility of the individual, but to give us all the light of the truth which alone, if we choose it responsibly, can set us free.
Obedience to the truth is what makes freedom most fully free, most fully itself. A freedom which does not follow the truth will literally never define itself. It gives the impression of conserving for itself all options, but, at a certain point, all options become no option. The serpent's deception of Eve was precisely to promise a freedom without limits, the lie of pretending one is God. But that is simply not the truth, not the reality. For the human being, that would be an unrealistic freedom which therefore actually prevents the person himself from being real. Keeping all options open is a radical reluctance to engage in reality; it is to live in a dream or in a fantasy -- or in a lie. Love can only be found with your feet on the ground, and we can only land there if we choose reality, the truth. Mere external acknowledgment of the truth, however, if it is not interiorized in sincerity of heart, conscience and action, is a sham. A line from a psalm reads: "why do you recite my covenant, yet throw my words to the winds?" The words by which the truth of Christ is taught to us convey the power of Christ's life and love, for that is whence they come. That is our ground. If the words by which we say we receive Christ's message do not in turn proceed from our hearts, then His word becomes like a very precious liquid being poured off the back of a duck. If freedom is used willfully and consciously to endorse error, then a person will, to that degree, define themselves as erroneous, as a "false person." The deliberate rejection of Christ's truth, be it conveyed by Scripture or by the Church's magisterium, proves the following words of Jesus: "It is not I who will condemn you ... the word itself I have spoken will condemn you." Christ can do no more to save us than He has already done, and He has entrusted it all to the Apostles to be ministered to all creation for all time through the preaching of the Gospel and in the administration of the sacraments. Christ is the truth. Christ is true reality. Christ is true freedom. And that Christ is given to you and for you through the men, poor and sinful though they be, called the Bishops of the Catholic Church.
There is much today that militates against our finding peace in our faith. It shall not prevail. The peace Christ gives can be neither taken from us by the world nor given to us by the world. Neither the moral and spiritual terrorism of a society which boasts openly of being godless, nor the terrible crimes of some priests or bishops, nor the erosion of faithful Catholic witness in society, must deter us from remaining true and firm in the faith of the Church. Christ has not abandoned us, nor is His Resurrection somehow rendered void by the failure of some or the doubts of others. So, have courage, be vigilant with Catholic commonsense and, in the midst of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, pray as you have never prayed before.
The first three Commandments: http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt1ind.htm "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND"
Commandments 4 through 10: http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt2ind.htm "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF"
Gospel Reflection 20070506
Following your conscience doesn't mean doing what you want!
Forming your conscience is described by religious thinkers as the process of educating oneself about what is right and wrong. It is developing a sensitivity to the goodness or blameworthiness of choices and a desire to make the choice for the good.
You have the responsibility to form your own conscience, to learn what is the responsible and loving choice in various arenas of life. It requires that you reflect within yourself, reach out to others to learn from them, check out what the Church teaches on the topic and place yourself in God's presence, asking for wisdom and insight in whatever matter you are trying to understand.
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Fifth Sunday of Easter
They Will Know Us by Our Faith & Works
May 6, 2007
Gospel
Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35
When Judas had left them, Jesus said,
“Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him,
God will also glorify him in himself,
and God will glorify him at once.
My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
I give you a new commandment: love one another.
As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
This is how all will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.”
This Gospel reading kind of reminds me of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. People in those days didn’t have radio or TV, had a few newspapers, which they read much more thoroughly than we do today. That’s all they had by way of communication and information. So they would readily walk 3 or 5 miles from the area around Gettysburg in order to hear the well-publicized address by the President of the United States. It was the dedication of a very large cemetery, dedicated to those soldiers who had fallen at the Battle of Gettysburg. They were ready for a great oration.
Abe Lincoln stood up to speak. “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought to this land a new nation – conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. We are now involved in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” . . .
By that time, the speech was almost half over, but the people didn’t realize it! Then Wham! It was over! And some in the audience had just begun to listen! If they had been the least bit distracted, they missed the whole thing! “What a disappointment,” many thought. Yet, a reporter subsequently printed it, short as it was, and it was eventually considered one of the most effective and powerful speeches ever delivered.
Well, speaking of things being short, I timed today’s Gospel reading when I was sitting in my room the other day. I read it slowly, as if I were reading it to you today, and it took slightly more than 30 seconds. But as with the Gettysburg Address, the brevity belies its profundity. Don’t let the brevity of this Gospel reading fool you either.
These words were spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper, the night before He died. This was the night He gave us the Holy Eucharist, the perpetual Presence of His saving Death and Glorious Resurrection. And along with it, He gave the key to understanding it all. The key is what He called a “New Commandment.” – Love one another.
So what’s new? Love one another? Yes, but the measure of that love is what’s new: “Love one another as I have loved you.” This is extreme.
Extreme. There’s a lot of use of the word extreme these days. Like in sports: Extreme snowboarding; Extreme prize fighting. Extreme dirt bike racing. Etc.
This is extreme: “As I have loved you.”
Did you see the movie The Passion of the Christ? If you did, you saw a picture of extreme love. Total. Selfless. Jesus tells us today that’s what will show anyone who looks at your lifestyle that you are a disciple of His. In other words, that you are truly Christian. Putting this another way, look at the radical element of Christianity. The extreme element of Divine Love.
On this fifth Sunday of Easter, we’re basking in the mystery of the life and death of Christ as it is played out in the lives of Christians who take the Sunday Eucharist seriously. In the lives of people who give love not as the world gives, good as that may be. Not as the world loves, appealing as that love is. But as good as God loves. To this degree we are challenged to love God – and one another.
What does that say about married life? About family life? About my support of the Church? Of my forgiveness of enemies? About just every part of my Christian life?
In spite of all the declarations of love and affection for the significant people in our lives, we know that deep down, words are cheap. "Best friends" drift apart, parents and children are estranged, husbands and wives become adversaries in the courtrooms. The word "forever: has ceased to mean "permanent". It now means, "until it is no longer convenient," for me, or maybe even no longer profitable for me."
One day a presiding priest at a ceremony listened as the beautiful bride and a presentable bridegroom pledged their love for one another. Love certainly was in the air that day. In the apartment where he had stayed the night before the wedding, the last thing he heard before he drifted off to sleep, and the first thing he heard when he awoke the next morning was the couple next door bickering and shouting at each other. That really made him think. Wasn't love in the air the day they pledged their love to each other? What happened since?
"We kill the things we love", wrote one writer. Selfishness and loss of self-control do kill love, but the true lover does not kill love, he or she is ready to die for it.
Today, Jesus calls us to a love like His, calls us to a love like His Heavenly Father, and that call is a call to action. I ask you, which one of us would not die to save some member of our family, or even a very close friend?
In today's gospel, Jesus leaves his apostles with a new commandment. "Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another." This command is fitting to stir up love in this Easter season. Why? Because Easter is a call to Joy and love is it's source. Then what is love? Is it a feeling? A mood? Yes, it is both of these things and far more. It is an indefinable mystery and a way of life. St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, describes love as "sincere, hate what is evil, hold onto what is good, love one another with mutual affection."
Jesus' call to love is a call to action. If we live in Him, we will produce many good deeds. Our actions of life need always the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or they won't be actions from a love like Jesus' own. If not guided by truth, love is blind, as the saying goes. And you know what can happen to love when it is blind. We become capable of terrible things in the name of love. True love has the best vision.
It must have been distressful to look at the face of Jesus during the Last Supper. I refer not so much to the distress Jesus Himself felt before His impending agony and death (the apostles seem not to have understood, even then, that these were coming). Rather, I mean the distress anyone would experience at watching someone they love shift so quickly and dramatically from one feeling to another. The different Gospels convey any number of differing and even opposing feelings in Jesus: His deliberate confidence, His mortal sorrow, His tender love, His deep regret, and so on. On noticing this, one could not but be concerned for Him, anxious to understand what was happening in His soul, anxious to reassure Him. Yet, it is precisely in the midst of this inner, final preparation for the definitive battle between good and evil that He bequeaths to all His disciples some of the greatest gifts of His love: the Eucharist and the new commandment, to love as He has loved.
After the tense exchange with Judas, and after Judas’ departure, Jesus seems to heave a great sigh of relief. But it is not, I believe, because He could not bear the company of Judas. He speaks of glorifying God, of being glorified by God, of His departure from His friends and of His final command to them. Jesus knows that Judas goes to set in motion the final confrontation, and, fixing His Heart no longer on the genuine sadness He surely felt for Judas, He sighs with relief that, at last, the moment for which He was born had come: to glorify God in dying, and to be glorified by God in being raised from the dead.
This is what salvation means: we are restored by God, to God, in God. The paradise from which sin banished us is given back to us, through the flesh of Jesus, in the life of the Holy Trinity. That is why whatever we do for the least of our brethren, we do unto God. To love as Christ, does not just mean to imitate Him externally; that would be impossible if we did not have the free gift of that love actually in us. Christ invests us with His own love; that is why He can command us to love as He loves; otherwise, I repeat, we could never do it.
When we love as Christ, then, we glorify God (die for Him) and are glorified by Him (raised by Him). When we love as Christ, we die to the sinful self, and we are raised to the new, “life-full” and “love-full” self. It is in the true, loving encounter with Christ that every man discovers himself, knows himself, loves himself in truth. From the outside, Christian love may not look any different from effective social work, but inscribed deep within it is the very power of the death and resurrection of Christ, the very presence of the Trinitarian God. That is why Christian love, be it conscious or unconscious, transforms the world. Judas wanted Jesus to transform the world with a sword; but Jesus’ sword is His Cross, meaning His death and resurrection, and it transforms, not just the world, but the entire universe. Christian love is not ostentatious, it seeks not its own glory but the glorification of God in the one loving and in the one loved. But if I love as Christ, I will be loved by Christ, and God Himself will make His home in me. To know that home, I need to leave the home (the “comfort zone”) I would make for myself, and let God make my home for me. God’s dwelling place is with those who love as Christ, but such love is not possible without true death, which is not so much physical death as it is the renunciation of self. Selfishness gives way to “self-fullness”, a fullness which comes paradoxically from self-emptying, something possible only in the redeeming power of the love of Christ.
To the degree that each of us is open to Christ, others will know that we belong to Him, or as Jesus puts it, “this is how all will know that you are my disciples.” Talking about Christ is essential to evangelization, but it is the witness of Christian love which convinces. Christian love carries Christian truth from the mind to the heart; what is inscribed in the mind by concepts, is transcribed into the heart by Christian love. Certainly, we need to know our faith, and not just in terms of what we learnt as children. There should be a Catechism of the Catholic Church beside the Bible in every Catholic home; and neither book should look beautiful and unused. The Word of God in the Scriptures is guarded, preserved, explained and deepened by the Church in the Catechism. Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ; ignorance of the Catechism is ignorance of how the Spirit of Christ has led the Church to a greater understanding of the mysteries of Jesus through the centuries. So we must be generous and disciplined and heartfelt in taking time and making time to deepen our understanding of the faith. This is our right and our duty as Catholics, and no-one should consider it an optional extra. To be disciples of Jesus, how can we not want to know more about His teachings from the apostolic Church He gave us?
Yet, Jesus says clearly that all men will know we are His disciples, not by how well we quote the Bible or the Catechism, but by the fact that we love one another as He has loved us. Knowing about Jesus with the head is not necessarily knowing Jesus with the heart, although the more we learn with our minds, the more deeply we ought naturally to rejoice in loving Jesus Himself. So it is not a case of either being a disciple by learning or being a disciple by loving: it’s both (the usual Catholic solution!). One feeds and builds up the other. When all has been said and done –and it has to be said and be done- our glory and our judgment will be measured by how we have loved one another as Christ has loved us. God is glorified when man is in love – so long as it is in Christ’s love. When this happens, the universe itself rejoices, because man is fulfilling the purpose for which he was made. On the night He was betrayed, Jesus knew that the joy of God and of His beloved universe depended on His free acceptance of death. He despised the ignominy of the Cross and fixed His gaze on that joy which lay ahead. To keep us fixed on it, He gave us the Eucharist, the sacramental pledge of the glorious joy which we hope to be ours and He gave us the commandment of love which maps out day by day the pathway to salvation, in the midst of the sufferings and trials of our time.
Jesus gave his disciples this last and greatest commandment to love one another. Here is how to open your heart to embrace love as the ideal of the Christian vocation:
1. This Is How They Will Know You Are My Disciples.
Nowadays, words alone are empty; they need to be backed up by our actions. All too often we have experienced that zealous politician or marketer who makes promises that instinctively we know are too good to be true. We want to believe the good they promise, but experience has taught us to have a healthy sense of skepticism. Unfortunately, this contemporary disbelief of “too good to be true” could also be said of Christianity. Christians are to be known by their love for one another. In my marriage, with my children, and my social circle, am I known for my Christ-like love?
2. Love Has High Standards
An old Robert Redford film had a classic line: “Love is never having to say you are sorry.” As Christians, though, we are aware of our weak nature and tendency to sin. We need to ask pardon, and frequently. More than often, the souls we hurt are those closest to us: my spouse, a child, a parent or in-law. The disciples too had their squabbles with each other. The love that bound them, exhorted them to make peace with one another as Christ makes peace with his Church: “Father forgive them for they do not know what they do” (Luke 23:34). Is my love great enough to overlook the weaknesses of those who hurt me and turn my wounded ego around to compassion and pardon? To err is human but to forgive is divine.
3. Love Is from the Heart
Christ told his disciples, “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). This applies as well to harboring grudges in our hearts. Love goes beyond kind words and actions to the very heart of man: our thoughts. Although it may cause initial violence to our will to think well of those who have hurt us, it is truly therapeutic! Our Lord said, “From the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy” (Matthew 15:19). Likewise, a heart that actively looks for the good in others will form the habit of speaking well and acting kindly towards those who naturally are displeasing. Thinking well of others renews our faith in God’s mercy. If we are merciful, how much more can we expect Our Lord to be patient and merciful with us!
The first three Commandments: http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt1ind.htm "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND"
Commandments 4 through 10: http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt3sect2chpt2ind.htm "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF"
