Gospel, Homily and Coffee

We have a problem, or maybe a  better word is challenge, in our Christian faith.  One that can keep us from experiencing the fullness of life as a human person. Here it is:  God, Father Son and Holy Spirit is utterly transcendent.  We cannot adequately describe God. Our language fails us. God exists outside of time and space.   We exist within time and space.  Our language only works with time and space. We do use symbolic language to talk of God.  Yet, too often we can get locked into thinking the symbolic language is literal language, and this is how we get trapped. Ascension is classic. We speak of Jesus rising into heaven.  The first reading of Acts captures this and it talks about the disciples standing there looking up. So we tend to think of Heaven as up there, literally. When humans started looking into the stars with telescopes, one of the questions they tried to answer is where is heaven. But if we think Heaven is an  “up there” locati

I love Pepsi.  I love chocolate.  I love hiking. I love the SF Giants. I love long walks on the beach at sunset. I love my dog.  I love my mom and dad. In English we use the word “love” a lot, for a lot of things.  We love to use the word “love”. And the things we equate with love, like dogs and parents...what does that say about us? I challenge us to pay attention to our words today and ask ourselves how many times we used the word “love” and to what. Because I think we lose the importance of that word “love”. Clearly Jesus uses the word, but note the differences, especially in the Gospel for today. Love, as Jesus experiences and “commands” us to have, is not a feeling.  It is not a preference, or favorite flavor of something or of someone. The love that Jesus lives, dies for and is raised from the dead in, is that choice, that conscious choice, to see the good in another human person. Love means to look at another human person, no matter who, and choose to b