Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Tag: love

  • Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord

    Palm Sunday of the Passion of Our Lord

    Today’s readings

    I think if we had to sum up the Liturgy today with a contemporary quip, it might be, “Well, that escalated quickly!”  In the first Gospel we heard, during the blessing of the palms, Jesus triumphantly enters into Jerusalem for the festival.  He enters in humility, on a colt, not a horse signifying a warrior king.  And yet the crowds sense the Messiah of their longing and cry out in joy, “Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”  This sure seems to be the hour for which Jesus came, and it looked like he had won them over.  But two chapters forward into our second Gospel for today, in the reading of the Passion, and those same crowds cry out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!  Give us Barabbas!”  This, friends, really is the hour for which Jesus came.  The hour for him to lay down his life.

    It seems like things have escalated quickly, but really we know they didn’t.  All through the Gospel, Jesus has been getting under the skin of the religious establishment, calling out their weak and self-serving adherence to the Law, taking care of the real needs of people as they should have been, and showing people a way of life based not on legalism, but on caritas, love poured out in service to others.  That he will punctuate that caritas love at the end of the Gospel today is quite instructive.  The whole of the Gospel centers around laying down our lives for others.

    And, really, if we take a big picture view of the history of salvation, things haven’t escalated that quickly at all.  All through the scriptures, Old and New Testaments alike, people – we – have been missing the point.  The cycle of sin that spirals all through the scriptures has seen God send messages, through signs and prophets, of how things had gone wrong and what needed to be done.  And all through the scriptures, people have heeded the message only in lip service, or have outright destroyed the prophets who brought the message.  And yet again, God sent new messages, and yet again, the people sinned.  We know that the sacrifice of Christ, God made man, was always God’s plan for salvation.  It has been incubating for generations, and now, finally, the hour has come.

    Honestly, though, we know things have continued to escalate.  A pandemic has highlighted selfishness in many instances, scourging Christ yet again.  Injustice to people of color has continued and grown, causing Christ to fall a fourth time, crushed under the weight of the cross.  With all that the past year has taken away from us, with all the anxiety we have felt, with all the love we haven’t been able to show or receive, we need Simon of Cyrene to help us shoulder the burden of it all, and Veronica to wipe the blood and sweat from Christ’s face once again.  People walk the Way of the Cross over and over, and the hour of Christ’s Passion seems to always be present.

    Who are we going to blame for this?  Whose fault is it that they crucified my Lord?  Is it the Jews, as many centuries of anti-Semitism would assert?  Was it the Romans, those foreign occupiers who sought only the advancement of their empire?  Was it the fickle crowds, content enough to marvel at Jesus when he fed the thousands, but abandoning him once his message was made clear?  Was it Peter, who couldn’t even keep his promise of standing by his friend for a few hours?  Was it the rest of the apostles, who scattered lest they be tacked up on a cross next to Jesus?  Was it Judas, who gave in to despair thinking he had it all wrong?  Was it the cowardly Herod and Pilate who were both manipulating the event in order to maintain their pathetic fiefdoms?  Who was it who put Jesus on that cross?  Even now, who do we blame for the death of our Lord?

    And the answer, as we well know, is that it was – is – me.  Because it’s my sins that led Jesus to the Way of the Cross.   I have been the selfish one.  I have been the one who has looked down on people who are different from me, using my privilege at their expense.  I have been the one that has withheld love and forgiveness and grace in so many different ways.  I have been comfortable with my sins and content to stay the way I am.  It’s my sins that betrayed my Jesus; it’s my sins that have kept me from friendship with God.  

    But as ugly as I have been, as much as I have nailed him to the cross, even so: he willingly came to this hour and gave his life that I might have life.  

    And you.

    He gave himself for us.

  • The Second Sunday of Lent

    The Second Sunday of Lent

    Today’s readings

    What would you give up for love?

    That’s the question I want us to focus on today because I think it is, perhaps, the question of the spiritual life.  What is it that we are willing to give up for love?  And I’ll be honest: this set of readings gets me every time, and this is one of those homilies that has given me a few tears of repentance as I wrote it, and probably will as I preach it.  When I see what Abraham, Jesus, and ultimately God the Father would give up for love, it makes me repentant of the shoddy things I tend to hang on to.  But let’s bookmark that for a bit and get into the readings we have today.

    Today’s first reading puts poor Abraham in an awful position.  Remember, he and Sarah were childless well into their old age.  And it is only upon entering into relationship with God that that changes.  God gives them a son, along with a promise, that he would be the father of many nations.  That was unthinkable.  Think of anyone you know who has had to struggle with the pain of being childless.  And here God puts an end to that just when they have come to terms with the fact it was never going to happen.  Everything changes for them, an old and childless couple.

    And so put yourself in Abraham’s place.  After rejoicing in the son he never thought he’d have, God tells him: “Take your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah.  There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.”  It’s not a suggestion, it’s not an invitation, it’s an order.  Now, Abraham knows that it’s only because of the gift of God that he has Isaac to sacrifice in the first place.  But for those of you who are parents: think about it, what would you do?  How would you feel in that moment?  That boy is the answer to your life-long prayers, and now God wants him back.  Wow.

    The reading omits a chunk in the middle that is perhaps the most poignant part.  Abraham packs up and takes his son on a journey, travels with some servants, and at the end of it, he and Isaac haul the wood and the torch up the mountain.  Isaac asks him: “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”  Can you even begin to imagine the anguish in poor Abraham’s heart?  And yet he responds in faith: “My son, God will provide the sheep for the burnt offering.”  Which, of course is true.  God had provided Isaac, who was intended to be the sheep.  God had, indeed, provided Isaac.  But Abraham couldn’t have known that God would intervene.

    Now, we could get caught up in the injustice here and call God to task for asking such a horrible thing in the first place.  Why would God test poor Abraham so?  Why would he give him a son in his old age, only to take him away?   What purpose did that have?  Who wants to worship a God who would do something like that.  But we have to know that the purpose of the story is to illustrate that God has salvation in mind; he always intends the good for us.  Yes, God would provide the lamb.  It was never going to be Isaac; it’s not even the sheep caught up in the thicket – not really.  We know that the sheep for the burnt offering is none other than God’s own Son, his only one, whom he loves.  The story is ultimately about Jesus, and his death and resurrection are what’s really going on in today’s Liturgy of the Word.

    Let’s let that sink in for a minute.  No, we don’t want to worship a God who would be evil enough to give a couple the gift of a child in their old age and then demand that he be sacrificed.  But we certainly worship this God who, in his great love for us, sacrifices his Son, his only one, whom he loves.  That, friends, is our God.  That’s what all of this is all about.

    Now let’s get back to the thought I asked you to bookmark at the beginning of my homily today: Abraham trusted God and was willing to give up the thing he’d probably die for – his own son.  God asked, and he, anguished as he must have been, made the preparations and was ready to do it.  That’s what love of God meant to him.  So what are we willing to give so that we can demonstrate – to ourselves if no one else – our trust in God’s ability to love us beyond all telling?  For Lent, we’ve given up chocolate, or sweets, or even negative thinking or swearing.  Maybe we’ve not done well with them, or maybe we have even given up on the things we gave up!  But we need to see in Abraham’s willingness that our sacrifices are important; they mean something.  So maybe now, still early in Lent, it’s time to take a second look at our Lenten sacrifices.  Can we go deeper?  What are we willing to give up to experience God’s love more fully?

    Jesus goes up a mountain in today’s readings too – and he too sees that he is to become the sheep for the sacrifice – sooner rather than later.  That was the meaning of the Law and the prophets of old, symbolized by Moses and Elijah on the mountain.  But knowing that, and knowing what’s at stake, he does not hesitate for a moment to go down the mountain and soldier on to that great sacrifice.  He willingly gives his own life to be the sheep for the sacrifice, because leaving us in our sins was a price he was not willing to pay.  His life was the thing he was willing to give up for love; for love of us.

    There are a lot of things out there for us that seem good.  But the only supreme good is the life of heaven, and eternity with our God.  Think of the thing that means everything to you: are you willing to sacrifice that to gain heaven?  Are you willing to give everything for love of God?

    Because, for you, for me, God did.

    God did that for us.

  • Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    The injunction for wives to be submissive to their husbands, given in our first reading, certainly offends our modern ears.  That’s just not the kind of thing we say in this society, at least not in these days.  Yet this was the norm in the society in which Saint Paul ministered.  So that command would hardly have raised an eyebrow.  What would have been shocking in Saint Paul’s time was the reciprocal injunction to husbands to love their wives as they loved their own bodies.  Indeed, Saint Paul’s point was not to rile either husbands or wives, but more to promote the living of harmonious family relationships.

    So how would it look now?  Today, I think Saint Paul would insist that husbands and wives would live as equal partners, showing mutual respect, and living the love of Christ in their relationship.  Saint Paul would certainly say that men and women should work together to foster families in which God’s love could be shown and made manifest in the world through them.  

    The real point of this reading, we must remember, is that the love of husband and wife echoes the love between Christ and the Church.  He says this in the second-to-last line of the reading: “This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the Church.”  The marriage of man and woman is intended to be an icon, a reflection, a window where all can see the marriage of God to the Church and to the world.  It’s a challenge and a decision that married couples must make every day, as well as those of us wed to the Church through Holy Orders.

    May we all love one another as Christ loves his bride, the Church.

  • The Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    The Thirtieth Sunday of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Mike was one of my favorite people in the world.  He owned the service station where my family had, and still has, our cars repaired and maintained ever since we first moved out to the suburbs, almost forty years ago now.  Dad used to joke that with all the cars we brought in there over the years, we probably had ownership in at least the driveway by now.  Mike was the kind of guy who, if you brought your car in for a tune-up, would call you and say, “your car doesn’t really need a tune-up yet, so I’ll just change the oil and a couple of the spark plugs and you’ll be fine.”  He was honest and did great work, and it seemed like everyone knew him.  He taught that to a kid who came to work for him when he was just sixteen.  When Mike retired five years or so ago, Ted took over for him and runs the business just the way Mike taught him.

    Mike was a regular at the 7am Mass on Sunday, and after his retirement was a pretty regular daily Mass-goer.  The church would sometimes ask him to help a person in need with car repairs.  This he did gladly; he was always ready to serve.  A couple of years ago, when Mike died, I took Mom to his wake.  It took us an hour and a half to get in to see him and his family, and it was like that all night long.  His funeral packed the parish church, and eight of us priests concelebrated the Mass.  Mike left his mark on our community in incredible ways, and nobody ever forgot it.  Mike truly understood the kind of love that Jesus calls us to have in today’s Gospel.

    Today’s gospel reading speaks to us about what may be the hallmark of Christian life: love of God and love of neighbor.  This two-pronged approach to loving is what life is all about for us, it is, in fact, the way we are all called to live the Gospel.  The scholar of the law is testing Jesus to see if he can come up with a way to discredit him.  But Jesus’ answer is one that the scholar can’t take issue with.  He boils all of the law and the prophets down to just two basic commandments: love the Lord your God with everything that you are, and then also love your neighbor as yourself.  There were over six hundred major and minor precepts in the Jewish law, and the scholars argued about them all the time.  But they can’t really take issue with what Jesus said.  In fact, the first of the laws that Jesus quoted, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind and soul…” was once that so many students of the law had memorized from the time they were little children.  In fact, many Jews did and do post that particular quote of the law on their doorposts and reverence those words when they enter the home, so this was not new ground for them.  What was new was putting the love of neighbor parallel to that law.  And when you think about it, this is so common-sense.  If we love God and neighbor, there won’t be any room for sin or crime or anything like that.  It’s so simple.  And yet so hard to do.

    But it shouldn’t be that way: it shouldn’t have been hard for the Pharisees and it shouldn’t be hard for us either.  The Pharisees made up the strongest part of the religious establishment of the time.  They were so concerned about getting the law right, that they often missed the whole point of the law in the first place.  Jesus was always taking them to task for that.  The law came from none other than God himself, and he gave it for the good of the people, but the Pharisees used it to keep people under their thumb, which was what they were trying to do to Jesus here.

    And, to be clear, God is all about justice.  So if that’s how he wanted it, the law would indeed be very rigid.  But as we see from the small sample of the law we have in our first reading, God wanted justice to be tempered with mercy.  Sure, go ahead and take your neighbor’s cloak as collateral on a loan.  But you better give it back to him before sundown, because that’s all he has to keep him warm in the night.  Justice in the eyes of God, is completely useless without the application of compassion.

    This shouldn’t be a surprise to those of us who have learned, as early as we can remember, that God is love.  God is love itself, and God cannot not love.  That’s what God does and who God is: he loves us into existence, loves us in repentance, loves us with mercy, and loves us to eternity.  God is love in the purest of all senses: that love which wills the good of the other as other.

    So when Jesus boils the whole Judaic law down to two commandments, it’s not like he’s made it easy.  As I said; it is simple, but simple doesn’t always mean easy.  It means giving the person who just cut you off in traffic a break, because you don’t know what’s really going on in their life.  It means showing kindness to your family after a long day, even when they’re testing your patience.  It means finding ways to be charitable and help those less fortunate.  And it means cutting yourself some slack when you mess up, even when you’ve just committed the sin you’ve been trying to stamp out of your life forever.  You have to love yourself if you are going to do what Jesus said: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  That’s one that people miss all the time.

    The whole law and the prophets depends on love.  The way we live our lives needs to show that we depend on love too.

    So let’s pray with that right now.  Closing your eyes for a moment, take some quiet time to think about someone who has wronged you in some way.  Or, if it’s closer to your heart, think about a sin or cycle of sin that you’ve been struggling with. (…)  Take a moment now to place that person, or yourself, in Jesus’ presence.  Give him the offense the person has committed against you, or give him the sin you’ve been struggling with personally. (…)  Give him the feelings you have around this right now. (…)  Let Jesus tell you how much he loves you right now.  (…)  Tell Jesus about the love you have for him. (…)  Ask for his help to love the other person, or yourself, in the same way that he loves you. (…)

    Thank you, Jesus, for loving us.  Thank you for giving us the example of your love on the cross.  Thank you for laying down your own life out of love for us.  Thank you for never not loving me, no matter where I have gone or what I have done.  Help me to love as you love.  Help me to love you, love others, and love myself in the same way that you love me.  I love you, Lord, my strength.

  • Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Simon the Pharisee had committed a grave error in hospitality, and a serious error in judgment. In those days, when a guest came to your home, you made sure to provide water for him or her to wash their feet, because the journey on foot was often long and hot and dirty, and it was pretty much always made on foot. But Simon had done no such thing for Jesus.

    Simon’s intentions were not hospitable; rather he intended to confront Jesus on some minutiae of the Law so as to validate his opinion that Jesus was a charlatan. He judged the woman to be a sinner, and reckoned Jesus guilty of sin by association. But Jesus is about forgiveness. He didn’t care about the woman’s past; he just knew that, presently, she had need of mercy. Her act of love and hospitality, her posture of humility, her sorrow for her sin, all of these made it possible for Jesus to heal her.

    But the one who doesn’t think he is in need of healing can never be healed. And so that’s our examination of conscience today. Are we aware of our need for healing, or have we been thinking we are without sin, without brokenness, without openness to God’s mercy? If so, our moments of reflection today need to guide us to honest and open acceptance of God’s mercy, and a pouring out of the best that we have in thanksgiving.  Like the repentant woman, we need to humble ourselves, and pour out our sorrow for our sins.

    We are offered so much mercy and forgiveness for our many sins. Let us love much so that we might receive the great mercy our Lord wants to give us.

  • Thursday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Thursday of the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time

    Today’s readings

    Today’s readings present us with two very interesting images.  The first is that of a potter working at the wheel.  When the object turned out badly, the potter re-created the object until it was right.  Jeremiah tells us that just so is Israel, in the hand of the Lord.  Not that God couldn’t get it right the first time.  This prophecy simply recognizes that through our own free will we go wrong all the time, sadly, and Israel’s wrong turns are legendary throughout the Old Testament.  Just as the potter can re-create a bowl or jug that was imperfect, so God can re-create his chosen people when they turn away from him.  God can replace their stony hearts with natural ones, and give them new life with a fresh breath of the Holy Spirit.

    The image in the Gospel is a fishing image.  The fisher throws a net into the sea, casting it far and wide, and gathers up all sorts of fish.  Some of the fish are good, and are kept; the others are cast back into the sea.  So will it be at the end of the age.  God will cast the nets far and wide, gathering up all of his children.  Those who have remained true to what God created them to be will be brought into the kingdom; those who have turned away will be cast aside, free to follow their own whims and ideas.  Turning away from God has a price however; following one’s own whims and ideas leads to nothing but the fiery furnace, where there is wailing and grinding of teeth.

    The message that comes to us through these images is one of renewal.  We who are God’s creatures, his chosen people, can often turn the wrong way, and we do!  But our God who made us does not will that we would end up in that fiery furnace; he gives us the chance to come back to him, and willingly re-creates us in his love.  Notice that all we have to be is willing; the potter—God—does the work.  We just have to be docile to his re-creating merciful love.  Those who become willing subjects on the potter’s wheel will have the joy of the Kingdom.  Those who turn away will have what they wish, but find it ultimately unsatisfying, ultimately sorrowful, ultimately without reward.

    Today we pray that we would all be willing to be re-created on that potter’s wheel.

  • Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter (School/RE Mass)

    Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter (School/RE Mass)

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Gospel gives us some of the best news I think we can possibly get.  Jesus says he no longer calls us slaves, but instead he calls us his friends.  That’s important for us to know because I think most people believe that God doesn’t really have to care about us, his creatures, that much.  He could just give us commandments and expect us to follow them or else.  He doesn’t really have to teach us anything so that we understand him; he could just expect us to follow his commandments out of fear.  We think about God that way sometimes.

    But that’s not what Jesus is about.  We know that God made us so that he could love us and we could love him.  Even when we sinned and could not be his friends any more, he didn’t leave us to die in our sins.  Instead, he sent his Only-Begotten Son, Jesus, to become one of us and to pay the price that we deserved for our sins.  Jesus died on the cross, to pay that price, and he rose from the dead, so that we could be friends with God once again, and so that all those who believe in him and follow his ways can have the opportunity of eternal life with God in his heavenly kingdom.

    That’s the Good News!  That’s the Gospel!  Jesus says he doesn’t call us slaves anymore.  That’s because we aren’t slaves to sin anymore, or at least we don’t have to be.  We can instead turn to Jesus and be his friends, if we do what he commands us.  And the commandment he gives us today seems like a very simple one: love one another.

    Except that it’s not so simple all the time, is it?  Sometimes loving one another is hard to do.  Loving one another means we have to put others first.  Loving one another isn’t something we get to do only when we want to, but instead we have to do it all the time.  Loving one another means that we follow all the other commandments, because “love one another” is what sums them all up.  “Love one another” means that we remember that each person is created by God who loves them so then we have to love them too.

    But we don’t have to worry about how hard it is to love one another.  We have a God who loves us first and loves us best.  Because he loved us and sent his Only-Begotten Son Jesus to show us his love, we have the grace we need to love one another.  We can love one another when it’s hard to do, when they really make us mad sometimes, because God loves us all the time, even when we are hard to love, even when we make others mad and make God sad because of what we do or what we fail to do.

    We aren’t slaves anymore.  We have been set free.  But being free doesn’t mean we get to do whatever we want, whenever we want – that’s the same thing as being a slave to sin.  Being free means that we can love others and put others first because God has done exactly that for us – over and over again!

    So how will you love someone else today?  How will you love your parents or your siblings while you are doing e-learning today?  How will you love your teachers who might be explaining something very important that maybe you think is boring?  How will you teachers love the students who don’t seem to be getting it?  How will we all love our families today?  How will we put all these people first?  During the quiet parts of today’s Mass, let’s think about that.  Let’s come up with a plan to love someone even when they are hard to love.  Let’s love one another because God loves us first and loves us best!

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Friday of the Third Week of Lent

    Friday of the Third Week of Lent

    Today’s readings

    “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  That would be, I think, the most reassuring thing we could hear from our Lord!  To know that you’re on the right track — that your thoughts and heart’s desires are in line with God’s will — that would be a wonderful thing to know.  And today’s Scriptures give us the roadmap for finding that reassurance.

    Step one is repentance. The prophet Hosea wrote of Israel’s repentance.  Israel, as a nation, as we well know, had turned away from the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  They had turned to the false gods of their neighbors and had worshipped idols.  Hosea’s prophecy had been all about calling them back, urging them to return to the Lord who loved his people and yearned for them like a spurned lover.  In today’s first reading, Hosea prophecies the promise that God will accept back his wayward lover and will restore the people of Israel to his own loved possession.

    Step two is to hear the voice of God.  “If only my people would hear me,” the Psalmist says, “and Israel walk in my ways, I would feed them with the best of wheat, and with honey from the rock I would fill them.”  God longs to fill his faithful people with everything that they need to sustain life and live their faith.  All we have to do is hear his voice, to follow his commands, and walk in his ways.  This hearing the voice of God requires a steadfast faithfulness that will not be enticed by strange gods or flashy idols.  It’s important to note that we have to do step one first: we can’t hear God’s voice if we’re caught up in our sins.  There is a single-mindedness that is called for here: the faithful are called not to hear God as one voice among many, but to hear God alone.

    And step three is love.  In today’s Gospel, Jesus famously boils the commandments down to two: love of God and love of neighbor.  Again, there is an underlying single-mindedness: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  Love of God and neighbor isn’t a third or fourth priority, if we ever get around to it.  Love is prime: love must the first inclination of the heart, the first thought of the mind, and the first action of life.

    What does it take for us disciples to be not far from the Kingdom of God? It takes a Lent of repentance, a desire to hear and meditate on God’s Word and his presence in our lives, and then to love like there was nothing else to do in the whole world. I’ve been reflecting on the fact that this is the lentiest Lent I can ever remember, or want to have again! But the fact that we all have to keep social distance and stay home to contain COVID-19 gives us the opportunity to slow down, to quiet ourselves, and to make things right. And our Scriptures today give us a way to do all that.

  • Thursday after Epiphany

    Thursday after Epiphany

    Today’s readings

    Today’s Scriptures continue to reveal Christ manifested in the flesh, and the way his manifestation looks today is like love.  We have the great joy of continuing our reading from the first letter of John today, and, as I mentioned on Tuesday, John is always about love.  Today John gives us a discerning test, so that we can see if a person is of God.  The test is whether that person loves his or her brothers and sisters.  Because one cannot claim to love God who is so very much beyond us, if we cannot love the brother or sister who is right in front of us.

    That can prove to be a very daunting test to be sure.  Because I don’t think I’m too far out on a limb to say we’re not very often irritated by the God who is beyond us, but are often irritated by the brother or sister who is always right there in our face!  Still, the commandment is clear: “Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”

    Jesus Christ is the personification of God’s love for us.  God came to be among us not in some kind of ethereal nature, but with a human face and a human heart, and a love that overcomes all the flaws of our flesh.  It is that love that sets us free.  In Jesus, all the prophecies of deliverance are fulfilled: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” Jesus says, “because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”

    And if our own love for our brothers and sisters can transcend our petty day-to-day irritations, or even our deep-seated hurts and resentments, than maybe we can set people free, and even set ourselves free, and make Jesus incarnate in the world yet again.

  • Tuesday after Epiphany

    Tuesday after Epiphany

    Today’s readings

    During this Epiphany time, we continue to see various Epiphanies of the Lord, that is, we continue to see Christ manifested in different ways.  Today, I think we see our Lord manifested as lover.

    If you have time today, go back, and prayerfully read the first reading.  It’s one of my favorite selections from the first letter of Saint John.  This reading tells us quite clearly that you can see the presence of God in those who love one another.  I think we should all memorize the first line of that reading, because it’s key:

    Beloved, let us love one another,
    because love is of God;
    everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.

    Any time you’re in the presence of real love, you’re in the presence of God.  “Knows God” here carries special meaning: knowing God in this sense means you have entered into his life and are wrapped up in his presence.  Love is how you know you’re a disciple, how you know you’re on the way to heaven.  

    And it’s not something we do on our own; in fact it’s never something we do first: God is always the first lover.  Listen to the last verse of the first reading again:

    In this is love:
    not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
    and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

    God chooses to love us first and love us best.  God shows us how to love, right up there on that ugly Cross.  There is nothing God won’t do for love of us.

    So as Jesus comes into his life and ministry, we see him manifested as a lover.  He would sooner turn five puny loaves of bread and a couple of scraggly-looking fish into a sumptuous meal for thousands, than turn them away to fend for themselves.  Love always gives, love never stops until it has given everything, and then love still gives more.  That’s why the Cross is not the end, and the Resurrection is a glorious beginning.

    Today, Jesus is manifested as God’s love, freely given if we would freely receive it.  May God’s love change us all today, make us look more like God himself.  Happy Epiphany!