Friday of the Nineteenth Week of Ordinary Time

posted in: Homilies, Ordinary Time | 0

Today’s readings

God never forgets how much he loves us.  If this weren’t so, I don’t think any of us would be in existence.  God loves us into life and loves us through our life and one day, if we let him, will love us into eternal life.  The people of Israel had to know this better than anyone.  Ezekiel today reminds them that God loved them enough that he would remember the covenant he had made with them, the covenant that they had broken many times, and that he would pardon them for all they had done.  Because he loved them.

The question the Pharisees asked Jesus in the Gospel today had nothing to do with love, which is odd because it was a question about marriage.  Or, actually, the converse of marriage: divorce.  They were asking not because they wanted to know about how to love better in their relationships, but rather because they were trying to trick Jesus into some Moses-bashing.  But Jesus has none of that, reminding them of the indissolubility of love.

Many things can be forgotten.  God forgets things all the time – namely, our sins.  But love can never be forgotten.  God never forgets how much he loves us, and we dare not forget how much we love him, and because we love him, how much we love one another.  That love may require all kinds of forgetting: forgetting past hurts, forgetting resentments, forgetting what we think we deserve.  It’s that “letting go” that I spoke about yesterday.

May we all forget what we have to so that love is the only thing we can remember, and may we all go together, one day, to eternal life.