Tag: love

Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Today’s readings

“You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your soul,
and with all your mind.”

That certainly seems simple enough.  But we miss the mark on it all the time, don’t we?  The idea is to put God first, which of course, is the first of the ten commandments:  “I am the LORD your God; you shall not have strange gods before me.”  But we have all sorts of strange gods that vie for our attention every day, and way too often, we give in to them, and put something less than god ahead of the God who made us.

Back in my pre-seminary days, I used to work for a print company.  I had to manage multiple print projects for a few different customers, and so it was my job to schedule the print time in the plant, get proofs to customers, proofread projects, and a whole bunch of other stuff.  It could get very mind-boggling, so I took to writing very detailed to-do lists for myself so that I’d be sure to get everything done in the course of a day.

You probably do something like that too.  Whether you are managing a consulting firm or simply trying to get the kids to soccer and choir and reading club at the right times, you probably keep lists to make it easier.  I still do it today, and it’s the only way I can keep things going without forgetting something major.  These days, I use a computer version, but the idea is the same.

But one of the things I used to do when I worked at the print company was to include a one-word task every single day: “pray.”  I found, after I had been working there for a while, that I needed to do that to keep my faith life integrated with my work life.  The Scriptures teach us to pray always, and I found that unless I put that on my to-do list every day, there was precious little chance of my stopping to remember God, the One who created me and sustained me and loved me always.  Taking five minutes to pray was the least I could do.  I kept a Bible and a devotional in one of my desk drawers all the time, and I would take a five-minute break to use them.  That kept me a lot more focused during the day, and kept me from getting so full of myself that I made life intolerable for my coworkers.  Praying had a lot of benefits in the workplace.  And when I got to that one task – “pray” – I would remember to take time to do just that.

One day, I was very sick and couldn’t come in to work.  So my friend Joyce, who was my backup partner, filled in for me.  The next day, when I came in, I found she had left notes on my to-do list about what she was able to get done, and what happened on some of my projects.  Joyce is a woman of faith, so when she got to that “pray” task, I’m sure she smiled, and probably did just that.  But she left me a note next to that task that said something like: “Done.  But I probably should have made it a novena!”  Apparently it had been a hard day!

The point of all this is that we have to make a way to put God first in our lives.  Otherwise, if it’s not the busy-ness of the day, then it’s something else that comes first, and it’s almost never God.  It could be our status or ego that comes first, it could be money, it could be the latest gadgets or all the luxury comforts that we crave.  It could be sports, or it could be family activities, or even laziness that becomes a god for us.  And that’s all really sinful.  It’s a violation of the first commandment.  And it’s the first commandment for a very good reason: because it’s the most basic thing.  If we can’t hope to get this one right, we’ll never be very good at all the rest.

These days in our society, I have been wondering what is really first for us.  I’m thinking we may have made gods of government bailouts.  You’d think that in this time of uncertainty, and on the brink of a pivotal election, people would be coming to Church, reconnecting with their God, and drawing strength from their faith, putting God first even if they haven’t been doing that very well in the recent past.  But you’d be wrong.  Right now, we’re taking the annual “October Count” – a yearly mass-by-mass attendance count.  The attendance counts as compared to registered parishioners this year are running 2-3% lower than last year, and 6-7% lower than this time in 2004.  We are hearing that is true from other churches in our area too.

Even for those of us who manage to make the time to come to Mass on Saturday evening or Sunday morning, that still doesn’t necessarily mean that we are putting God first all the time.  We have to find ways to put God first, adding time with him to our to-do lists, making prayer and reflection a part of our daily routine.  Because it’s only by doing this that we can nurture a friendship with our God, a friendship that sustains us in bad times and in good, a friendship that ultimately leads us to heaven, that place we were created for by the One who created us.

Jesus makes it plain enough for us in today’s Gospel.  Love God and love your neighbor; these are the hallmarks of a Christian’s life, the hallmarks of life for all of us who were created by God and are called to return to God one day.  And so it is imperative that we get love of God and love of neighbor right.  To neglect these two commandments, which Jesus says today are the basis of the whole law and the prophets, is seriously sinful.

But the good news is that we have the chance, having heard the Word of God, to return and to re-prioritize our to-do lists, putting God first, loving God and neighbor, and coming at last into the presence of our God who loves us first and always.  The Psalmist, as always, helps us to make our prayer today: “I love you, LORD, my strength, LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, My God, my rock of refuge, my shield, my saving horn, my stronghold!”  He is the LORD and there is no other!

Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week of Ordinary Time: Let your mercy come to me, O Lord

Today’s readings

“Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

I love that there were short verses for the psalm today, and we got to repeat this refrain from the Psalmist over and over.  If you think about it, and if you really enter into it, it becomes a kind of mantra, or Taize chant, or the Jesus Prayer, a way to center ourselves and open ourselves up to the Lord in this Eucharistic celebration.

“Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

Because we are all in need of the Lord’s mercy, aren’t we?  Whether it is sinfulness, addiction, illness or infirmity, anxiety, worry about a family member, uncertainty about a job or the economy as a whole, we all have to realize that so much of the time we are in desperate need of the Lord’s love and mercy.

“Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

And we come to the point that we know that the only thing that can help us is the Lord’s mercy.  We may have tried so many times on our own to cure ourselves or make the pain go away or focus on the positive or not cause waves, we know that of ourselves, ultimately, we are unable to fix the things that really vex us.  Sin takes hold, circumstances beyond our control confound us, powerlessness causes frustration.  And then, all of a sudden, we remember the One we were trying to hide from, or with whom we didn’t want to bother with our troubles.  But in the face of our own powerlessness, we must turn to the one whose power can overcome all.

“Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

And so that powerlessness eventually, inevitably intersects with the loving power of our merciful God, who desires so much more for us than we would settle for.  And then we really do let God’s mercy come to us.  Because it was always there in the first place; never withheld.  We had just to let it come to us, had to be open to it, had to be in the place where we could receive it and come to the point where we could acknowledge our need for it and our gratitude for receiving it.  And when we at last arrive there, and that mercy comes to us, how overwhelmed we can be, how transformed, how loved we can feel, how cared for.  God’s mercy is always there, we have just to let it come to us.

“Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.”

Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

Today's readings

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I don’t know about you, but I think that lots of us when we were growing up, learned that we had to win or earn the Lord’s kindness.  If we wanted God to love us, then we had to behave in the right ways and follow all the rules.  And some of that comes from our human experience.  Many people often consume their lives with trying to win the approval of others.  But we have it all backwards: God is not like that, and that’s what today’s Liturgy of the Word is trying to tell us.  The Scriptures show us a God who loves us first, and then calls on us to respond to God’s love by living the right way.  Our entire lives should be all about responding in love to the love God has for all of us.

The first reading today recalls how God led the people Israel through the desert for forty years, bringing them safely to the land he promised on oath to their ancestors.  Traditionally this has been viewed literally, but there is also a tradition that sees the whole rescue of the Hebrew people from the tyranny of Egypt allegorically.  Many of the Church fathers see the rescue as our own rescue from the tyranny and slavery of sin, through the wilderness of the world, into the safe haven of God’s promise.  So whether we want to read this first reading literally today, or whether we want to see it as our delivery from sin, in either case, we see the Lord’s providence and kindness poured out on his people, delivering them from danger and bringing them safely into a land that had always been promised to them.

For our second reading these weeks, we have been and will be reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, arguably one of the masterpieces of his theological writing.  Today’s reading is somewhat the crux of his presentation in Romans: God in his mercy chose to save us even before we were worthy of it.  We had been enemies of God through the power sin and death had over us, but God in his goodness chose to redeem us anyway.  Having been reconciled, he now chooses in his kindness to save us from the power of death and bring us in to the grace and peace of his kingdom for all eternity.  This is all done through the grace and kindness of our God, who chooses to save us even though we are not remotely worthy of it on our own.

The Gospel reading, though, presents us with the greatest personification of God’s kindness.  Throughout chapter nine of Matthew’s Gospel, we see the crowds hanging on Jesus’ words and deeds.  In this chapter, Jesus heals a paralytic, he calls Matthew – a tax collector and a sinner – to follow him, he raises the daughter of a local government official from the dead, he heals two blind men, and expels a demon.  The crowds were understandably entranced by his words and deeds, and Jesus can see that they are entranced because they had so long gone without pastoral care.  The religious officials who should have been bringing them the good news of God’s kindness had instead been about the business of extracting the minutiae of the Law and filling their own coffers.  They had left the people abandoned of God, like sheep without a shepherd, and Jesus’ heart ached for them.  So in his kindness, he sends out the Twelve to continue his work and to call more and more people to come to know that the kingdom was at hand, and repentance would give them a place in that kingdom.

So these readings have been a great rehearsal of the kindness of God as the Scriptures present it.  God created us in love, redeemed us from the grasp of sin and death, and gives us a place in his heavenly kingdom.  And that’s nice, but the Scriptures would be remiss if they stopped there.  Instead, they go on to prescribe the proper response to God’s love and kindness, and each of today’s readings give us one way to do that.  These readings call us to keep the covenant, to boast of God and to freely give.

In the first reading, God makes the first move in favor of establishing a covenant.  He didn’t have to – clearly.  He had made us in love, but we had turned away from him, and not just once.  Yet, he was the one who sent Moses to lead the people out of the slavery of Egypt so that they could inherit the land he promised on oath to their ancestors.  If God has reached out that far to us, we can do no less than keep the covenant.  We have to live the life of grace: keep the commandments, love God and neighbor, celebrate the Gospel in everything we do.  We have to reach out to the marginalized and needy, just as God reached out to us in our own need.  “If you hearken to my voice and keep my covenant,” God says to us, “you shall be my special possession, dearer to me than all other people.”

In the second reading, St. Paul echoes what the first reading says.  God has made the first move.  He reconciled us while we were still sinners.  He gave us the way to the kingdom.  We didn’t deserve it, but our sinfulness is no match for God’s mercy.  So if God has been so merciful, we need to boast about it.  And we’re not to boast about it as if it was something we earned or accomplished on our own; we are to “boast of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” 

And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus gives us the key to our response to God’s love, mercy and kindness: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”  The gifts of grace are never given to us just for ourselves.  They are given to us to share.  Now that we have been redeemed and blessed, we must turn and bless others, leading them to the redemption God longs to pour out on them.  We are to freely give of the rich store of grace that has been freely given to us.

God does not manipulate us for his pleasure.  He does not demand that we behave perfectly in order to receive his kindness.  Instead, he is the one who washes our feet, who stretches out his arms on the Cross, who dies that we may live.  In the face of such great and perfect love, we can do no less than love in return. 

St. Boniface, bishop and doctor

Today's readings | Today's saint
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Be eager to present yourself as acceptable to God,
a workman who causes no disgrace,
imparting the word of truth without deviation.

St. Paul encourages his friend Timothy today to remain faithful to God and the Gospel and to be a tireless worker for the Truth.  Those qualities make this reading such an appropriate one for the feast of St. Boniface, bishop and martyr.

Boniface was a Benedictine monk in England.  He gave up the real possibility of being elected abbot of his community in order to reach out to the German people.  Pope Gregory II sent Boniface to a Germany where paganism was a way of life, and where the clergy were at best uneducated and at worst corrupt and disobedient.  Reporting all of this back to Pope Gregory, the Holy Father commissioned him to reform the German Church.  He was provided with letters of introduction to civil and religious authorities, but even so met with some resistance and interference by both lay people and clergy.  Yet, he was extremely successful, centering his reforms around teaching the virtue of obedience to the clergy and establishing houses of prayer similar to Benedictine monasteries.  Boniface and 53 companions were finally martyred during a mission, in which he was preparing converts for Confirmation.

What guided Boniface, what guided Paul and Timothy, was the words of today’s Gospel reading, those words which tell us the greatest of the commandments:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
And:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

When we love as we are loved, we cannot help but remain close to God and be vessels of grace to others and of life to the Church.  Boniface, Paul and Timothy were men who loved this deeply.  We are called to love that way too, today and every day, for the honor and glory of God.

Wednesday of the Ninth Week of Ordinary Time

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When I read St. Paul’s message to Timothy in our first reading last night, I resonated with the spirit of his message.  St. Paul reminds Timothy of his calling and of the authority that was given him when St. Paul laid hands on him.  The life that Timothy was called to lead as a consequence of that anointing was one that would be challenging, but blessed.  He would have to bear his share of hardship for the Gospel, but St. Paul tells him never to be ashamed of it.  Whatever is to befall them, St. Paul’s confidence is in the Lord: “For I know him in whom I have believed,” he says, “and I am confident that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day.”

That got me thinking about my own ordination as a priest, which was two years ago yesterday.  I clearly remember the words that Bishop Imesch spoke when he handed me the chalice and paten that I use for Mass to this day.  He said, “Receive the oblation of the holy people, to be offered to God.  Understand what you do, imitate what you celebrate, and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross.”  I think those very words would be words that St. Paul would understand.  “Understand what you do” seems easy enough, until it gets to the second instruction: “imitate what you celebrate.”  What I celebrate here is a sacrificial moment, and if I am to imitate that, then my life must be basically sacrificial.  That’s what is meant by the third instruction in what the bishop said to me: “and conform your life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross.”

Sometimes it’s hard for all of us to know that whatever our call may be, it will involve sacrifices.  Every single vocation necessarily requires that, because nothing authentic can ever be just about us.  We have to lay down our lives in love every single day because that’s what Jesus did for us.  Some days, as I tell the couples getting married here when I preach the homily for them, that may be hard work.  But it is always our hope that every day, whether it’s easy or difficult, it will be the greatest joy of our lives.  That’s why St. Paul tells Timothy that he should not be ashamed of his testimony to the Lord.  That’s why the bishop told me to conform my life to the mystery of the Lord’s cross.  Because none of us will ever regret anything we’ve sacrificed for love.

 

Sixth Sunday of Easter

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As we have gathered these last several weeks to continue our celebration of Easter, maybe you noticed that we have always had a reading from the Acts of the Apostles as our first reading.  In these readings, we have been hearing about an almost idyllic community, a community that has shared its resources, taken care of the poor, and even worked through a dispute with a grace that is rarely seen anywhere.  If you’re like me, it’s almost hard to relate to such an exalted community, and maybe you find yourself wondering why we would read these readings, when they only contradict the way Christians really live in the world.

I had a seminary professor who used to tell us “the Christian life looks like something,” “discipleship looks like something.”  If we don’t have a picture of what discipleship means or know something about how the Christian life looks, then we have nothing at all to strive for.  So, even though the First Community in the book of Acts seems a little out of step with our experience, if we never read about them, well, then we’d have nothing to strive for, no goal to achieve.  Today’s readings, in particular, I think, give us a picture of what the Christian life looks like.  Our Liturgy of the Word has proclaimed to us that the Christian believers’ lives are marked by joy, holiness of life, and love.  Let’s take a look at each of these.

First of all, the Christian believer’s life is marked by joy.  We saw that pretty clearly in the first reading.  “There was great joy in that city,” the Acts writer tells us, and for pretty good reason.  The particular reason for their joy was that “unclean spirits, crying out in a loud voice, came out of many possessed people, and many paralyzed or crippled people were cured.”  Anyone who experiences such radical, miraculous blessings cannot help but be overcome by joy.  But again, how close is that to our experience?  When was the last time you saw Fr. Ted or me walk into a room and evil spirits came out of people with loud cries?  Sometimes I’m at a meeting where I wish I could do that, but I digress…

The point is that we believers are all on for exorcising demons and binding up the wounds of the broken and healing those who are paralyzed.  Because people are possessed by all sorts of demons: addictions, sinful behavior, ignorance, just to name a few.  When any of us witnesses to those people, walks with them through their pain, or mentors them, we are exorcising their demons.  And people are paralyzed by all sorts of things.  Failure, grief, and depression paralyze people all the time.  Whenever one of us reaches out to someone in those conditions and helps them to get back on their feet, we are healing them.  And that kind of healing, that kind of exorcism, goes on all the time.  And because of that, there should always be great joy in Naperville.

Teilhard de Chardin wrote that “joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.”  Those of us who have been healed or forgiven, those of us who have been raised up out of our weakness know that it is through the presence of God that that has happened.  God may may well be working through the hands and lips of one of our brothers or sisters, because that is often the way that he chooses to make known his abiding presence.  Maybe the demons don’t all go away at once, and maybe it takes a little therapy before we can really walk steadily once we’re back on our feet, but God is present in all of that, and for that we should not cease to celebrate with great joy.  We are called to a joy that persists even amid the stormy times of life, a joy that we can find in those who reach out to us, or gratitude for small blessings.  My grandmother used to say, “Thank God for small favors!”  We are a people who are blessed even when our life is a mess, because God is still and always present to us.  The Christian believer’s life is marked by joy.

Secondly, the Christian believer’s life is marked by holiness of life.  This is a tough one and we would probably all be quick to object that we are not, nor could we ever be, truly holy.  But this is not the time for self-deprecating false humility.  Until we accept the fact that every single one of us, through our baptism, is consecrated, set aside and called to be a saint – yes, a saint – until we realize that and accept it, we have not even begun to live the Christian life.  Listen to what St. Peter says to us in our second reading once again:

Always be ready to give an explanation
to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope,
but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear,
so that, when you are maligned,
those who defame your good conduct in Christ
may themselves be put to shame.
For it is better to suffer for doing good,
if that be the will of God, than for doing evil.

So he calls us to three specific forms of holiness here: hopefulness rooted in Christ, gentleness and reverence to all people, and clarity of conscience.  We have to have a hope that is rooted in Christ.  Some days, it’s hard for some people to find any reason to go on.  But even when everything seems to be falling apart, there is still Christ.  Even if we think we are worthless, we certainly are not, because God created us in his image, and sent his Son to redeem us.  We have been purchased at a very great cost, and so it is with this confidence in Christ’s love for us that we can be hopeful people who look toward the future with conviction and courage.  But even in doing that, we are called to be gentle and reverent to all.  We have absolutely no business being engaged in racism, hatred, or even moral self-righteousness.  We are made good and redeemed by God, but so is everyone else on the planet.  We have no right to treat anyone with anything less than gentleness and reverence.  And finally, we are to be people of clean conscience.  This means avoiding scandal, not getting caught up in anything remotely immoral, always providing all people with a holy example, so that no one will be led astray.  This means we have to flee all sorts of evils, all kinds of obstacles that would and will drag us down if we let them.  In hope, reverence, gentleness, and clarity of conscience, the Christian believer is marked by holiness of life.

Finally, the believer’s life is marked by love.  In the last two sentences of the Gospel reading today, Jesus uses the word “love” four distinct times.  Listen again: “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me.  And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”  As my father used to say, “actions speak louder than words,” and so the love we are called to is a love that is evident by the way that we live and the way that we treat others, more so than a sentimental, warm fuzzy love where we’re all joining hands and singing “Kumbaya.”  Jesus is very specific here that the love we are called to is a love that begins with God and returns to God, a love that manifests itself in following the commandments.  The commandments of Jesus are also wrapped up in love.  Remember that in Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus is asked which of the commandments is most important, he says, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment. 
The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Matthew 22:37-39)

So Jesus tells us today that we are called to love by keeping his commandments, and these commandments consist in loving God and neighbor, the commandment that distinguishes the Judaeo-Christian way of life.  In today’s Gospel, it almost seems like it’s a quid-pro-quo kind of love: “whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.”  But we know this is not true.  We can love each other and love God because God loved us first, and loves us best.  Even when we are clearly unworthy of it, God’s love still draws us back to him.  We celebrate a season of God’s love right now: we remember that nothing, not even the cross and grave could stand in the way of God’s love for us.  What is happening in today’s Gospel is that Jesus is calling us to love in that same way.  Our love, too, must be unconditional, sacrificial, laying down our lives for one another and for our witness to God in Christ.  The Christian believer’s life is marked by love.

I’m sure at this point you’re thinking, “thanks Father Pat, none of this makes me feel like living the Christian life is any easier, any closer to something I can do.”  And you’re right.  You can’t.  I can’t.  None of us is ever capable of persistent, abiding joy, of holiness of life, or of unconditional, sacrificial love all on our own.  We just don’t have the capability for that kind of living.  But the good news is that we don’t have to be the ones to do it.  We who often fail to find joy in our living, we who struggle for holiness of life and fall flat on our face on our better days, we who yearn to be able to love as we are loved, we are given the incredible grace of the Holy Spirit to be able to make it happen.  Having converted Samaria to the faith, the early Christian community sent them Peter and John.  When they got there, they prayed for the newly-baptized Samaritans and it was then that they received the Holy Spirit.  In our Gospel today, Jesus says, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth…”  We who are baptized in Christ and anointed with the spirit have the special grace to be surprised by joy seemingly out of nowhere, to find strength to make a difficult choice for holiness of life, and to love those in our lives that are sometimes seemingly unlovable.  We do all of this guided by the strength and grace of the Holy Spirit, who is just as much a part of our lives as the air we breathe.  This gift of the Holy Spirit is why the Psalmist today can sing, “Come and see the works of God, his tremendous deeds among the children of Adam.” And we can reply, “Alleluia!  Let all the earth cry out to God with joy!  Alleluia!”

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter

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I love it when engaged couples pick this reading for their weddings.  Not just because it’s sentimental, all talking about love and everything.  I like it because of the way it talks about love.  Because it would be easy enough to say that if we just love each other a little more, everything will be fine.

 

But Jesus reminds us that this is not how love works.  And that sentiment is not at all what he had in mind when he said “Remain in my love.”  The word “remain” here is a translation of the Greek word meno, which is a word that connotes an abiding presence, a rootedness at one’s core.  “Remain” is too passive a word, kind of like sitting around and doing nothing, all covered with the love of God.  I think the better translation would be “live and breathe always in my love.” 

 

And that’s what Jesus goes on to say.  “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”  So this remaining in Jesus’ love involves keeping his commandments.  Do you remember what those commandments were?  Well, they revolve around love.  In Matthew’s Gospel, when the scholar of the law asks which of the commandments was the greatest, Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.  The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  (Matthew 22:37-39)

 

Putting God and neighbor first in the same way as Jesus did for us is what this kind of love entails.  And note carefully that the way Jesus put us first was by laying down his life on the cross.  Remaining in Jesus’ love, the command he gives us today, involves loving others in a sacrificial way, putting aside our own interests and ambitions at times, dying to self, so that we can give life to others. 

 

But this is not to make ourselves martyrs or even grumpy Christians.  This love leads to true joy, because in many ways it takes away the worry of having to think about ourselves.  “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.”  And so it is with great joy that we remain in Christ’s love; loving others as he has loved us – sacrificially and unconditionally.  And with this great love, as the Psalmist says, we “Proclaim God’s marvelous deeds to all the nations.”