All three of our readings for today have something important to tell us about keeping God’s commandments. Each one speaks about the importance of obeying God’s instruction to love.
God is love. He doesn’t decide to love on a given day or on a certain occasion, because of his very nature, he is love and he doesn’t stop loving. So too, he doesn’t just love us when we’re good, but he loves us with just as much intensity when we’re not so good, and when all is said and done, and the universe has faded away, he will still be loving us forever—time without end.
This is something we can hardly wrap our heads around, but suffice it to say, when we love, we are acting in a way which most resembles God. Now, which of the types of “love” resembles God the most?
When we don’t love, as Saint John tells us in his first epistle, we move further and further away from knowing God. In fact,
“Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.”
We are to love. How? Jesus says how.
“This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.”
So, how do we love? The way Jesus loved. We imitate Jesus. And when we imitate someone else, it’s because they imitated Jesus.
Saint Paul is a case in point: “Imitate me as I imitate Christ” 1 Corinthians 11:1. He wasn’t boasting here. He was just assuring the pupil Christian that the only reason they were to trust Paul’s words and actions is because he was imitating Christ. What did that imitation of Christ look like? How did Jesus express his love? The love of Jesus consisted in making sacrifices for us; enduring persecution and dying for us. By healing, restoring, guiding and protecting us. By reminding us of our self-worth and dignity in having been lovingly created for heaven. By giving us the Holy Spirit, our Blessed Mother, the angels and saints, his Mystical body of believers, and the Sacraments to get us safely through this pilgrimage, learning along the way, how to love, for it is by love alone that we will live in heaven, if by his mercy we get there. His mercy is love. He loves us by being patient with us, gentle and generous. He loves us when he hears our cries listening to us, and makes himself always present, especially through the Eucharist, but also through our brothers and sisters who assist us along the way and through them he shows us daily signs of his care. He loves us by giving us rest: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” Matthew 11:28-30.
He loves us by becoming poor for our sakes, as Saint Paul expresses in his letter to the Philippians. In fact, Saint Francis’ love, and his preaching on it, was deeply influenced by the Incarnation, and the Passion of our Lord and this helped him to discern our Lord’s presence in others. In Jesus’ birth among us, Saint Francis intuited a love beyond anything of this world, that would conceal itself beneath vulnerability, weakness, fragility, even conditions of pain, for the one and only Almighty God, powerful enough to bring the universe into existence, would now be locatable, in time and space, within a tiny, cold, little cave in Bethlehem. With what tenderness did Francis look upon the baby chosen to play the role of the Christ-child in Greccio. It
was a love so beyond our imagination that Francis needed and craved to see a semblance of it with his own eyes so as to reflect deeper into its mystery. Francis saw that to love us, Jesus was ready to suffer, and in that suffering is the highest form and expression of love, as Jesus himself declared in today’s gospel, “A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” John 15:13.
Yet, we’re not all there yet. Not all of us are that connected to God, or that mature so as to have come across this kind of sacrificial character in our own love towards others. Mothers and fathers generally know what it means, to love at a cost. The same way we struggle to make ends meet for ourselves, is the same way we ought to struggle for others to have a decent life, free from unnecessary burdens, and we’re not all there yet. We are not yet loving our neighbours as ourselves, as the Lord commanded. It’s a journey. We need to consider whether or not we’re even being human with others, i.e., kind, gentle, patient, and that we’re not harming them in any way, like exploiting them for our own selfish needs.
This is why Saint Francis admonishes us in his Letter to the Faithful when he says: “And let us love our neighbors as ourselves. And if anyone does not want to love them as himself, let him at least not do them any harm, but let him do good.”
Francis is here indicating that some of us not only do not love our neighbours as ourselves, but we’re still struggling to not hurt people. Question is, how are we hurting people? There’s many ways this can happen. It’s a question we will need to take to prayer, because in prayer our Lord enlightens our hearts and our minds and shows us what we need to work on and address in our lives. If the readings today are focusing on love, then an examination of conscience in where we are lacking in it is essential.
Another important thought for a lot of us to take to prayer is this one as well: if I am not yet loving others as I love myself, perhaps I’m not yet even loving myself enough. Perhaps my idea about myself is so base and shallow, or deprecating and merciless, that I’m actually loving others more than I love myself, and this too is not healthy. I heap compliments and positive feedback and mercy with others, but on myself, I’m ruthless and a savage. No. YOU are a child of God, precious, beloved, and worth more than gold and silver, for whom the Son of God spilt his precious blood and whom he wants with him in heaven forever. YOU are destined for heaven, and heaven without you there, would never be the heaven our Father created it to be.
Brothers and sisters, can you see how important prayer is, so that we think about these things? Can you see why our Lord insisted we pray always? We want to love, but we’re lost. We want to do good, but we need his healing. We want to think positively about ourselves, but we keep sinning, and that sin enslaves us to our sadness, guilt, darkness. Who has the answer? Jesus. Who came to set us free? Jesus. Where do we find Jesus? In prayer. Where do we find his powerful presence? In the Eucharist. Let us approach the Eucharist with faith and gratitude and allow the Lord to love us, and heal us, so that after loving ourselves as we ought, we can extend those beautiful graces to the hurting world around us. Amen.
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What a beautiful reminder to love ourselves so that we can love others even more. Beautiful homily. Love those church bells!
Something which often slips our mind. Thanks for the comment!