30th Sunday Homily Love is at the core; but what is love?
About a month ago, Bishop McElroy of San Diego, speaking against hateful speech of Catholics against Catholics, said “Our central call is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves”.
Love, Charity, is at the heart of our lives
Love is our mission.
Do our actions, do our choices reflect Love or something else?
Jesus too in this gospel passage is in the midst of conflict. He has been in a war of words with the religious leadership, the Pharisees and Sadducees.
These “men of God” have been attacking Jesus and his teaching, and Jesus has not only systematically defended himself, but has silenced their faulty arguments.
Here is he again, with the men who were supposed to know the law, and Jesus reminds them at the heart of the Law, there is Love.
Love anchors it all.
I am a child of the 60’s and 70’s.
I grew up with songs such as “What the World needs now, is Love, Sweet Love…”
And commercials with people arm in arm, singing in harmony how they want to buy the world a Coke, and somehow all will be better.
I did not understand. How could this emotion, this affection make changes? It didn’t make sense.
A start in understanding was with a priest, long time ago, who when I said “I do not feel love everyone”...he told me that was okay, it was impossible...and said it’s how we treat people.
Love, at its heart (pun intended) is NOT just about the affection or the emotion.
Love is the conscious choice to see and believe in the goodness of another.
Love sees goodness in others.
This is the Love that Jesus refers to.
Love sees beyond the superficialities of life; the politics, gender, race, sexual identity, economics, etc.
Love sees to that core of who we are...children of God.
Eye opening...I hope.
God loves all people, because God sees the goodness in all people and God sees that potential and desires that potential to be lived.
It does not matter the consequences of life. All people are Good.
Living as good people means we too see good in others and we desire and work towards helping all others know their goodness and to help them realize that goodness.
This is our mission as believers of Jesus Christ.
This is who Jesus Christ was and what he did; and revealed in Eucharist.We come to give thanks that God sees our goodness, we give thanks by living out our mission.
Our salvation is expressed by giving thanks to God, by our mission.
This defines who we are as Catholics, it defines our theology, it defines our doctrines and dogmas, it defines our laws.
Love, believing in Goodness of others, is what and who we are.
Yet, how we fail.
Look at the hate speech flowing from Catholics and Christians.
Look at the divisions that continue to plague us, in our parishes, diocese and world.
Look at the suffering that exists and is caused because we refuse to Love.
And yet, where and when Love has been present…
I have seen marriages on verge of destruction pull back together, because the couples put in a tremendous effort to get past the hurts.
Earlier this year I was in Belfast, and the peace remains. Because people are looking past the surface, and seeing people.
Earlier this year I was in Belfast, and the peace remains. Because people are looking past the surface, and seeing people.
I have seen men and women empowered by Love overcome addictions.
People also caught up in depression, who have lost the will to live; turned around when they experienced Love.
It requires a lot of effort, and it requires relationship. It also never a straight path.
Think of what Jesus did. His healings happened because he met with the people. He listened to them. He saw them as children of God, and through this, these people experienced Love; healing and forgiveness.
50 years ago, this would have been virtually impossible. Yet we admitted our own failings, and saw the greater good is not what separate us, but Christ who unites us.
Think about our own healing… I would be willing to bet they happened once we started talking with each other
We are at a critical point in the history of our church and in our diocese.
Too many of us are only concerned with maintaining ourselves.
Only concerned with doing what we have always done; playing it safe.
We are losing our young persons.
We are losing our relevance in this world.
We are not loving as we can; as Christ has loved us.
Pope Francis calls us to reclaim our mission: to reclaim Love and literally go out into the world and connect with people.
He calls us to be Christ, the visible sign of God’s love for all, to all people.
This is ministry.
We need to be there for our young persons, who need to know what God’s love is as they go through those traumatic adolescent years.
We need to be there for married couples as they struggle with giving of self, and this tendency in our culture to be individualistic at all costs.
We need to love those sick and elderly, and not just make euthanizing them the norm.
We need to be relevant in this world, as believers of Jesus Christ.
We need to live the Eucharist, live the self-giving of God and make real changes.
The world does need Love; not the necessarily the sweet kind, but real love that sweats and cries, that holds hands, that listens, that gives.
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