Have You Ever Fallen in Love?

 

4^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle C

Jer 1:4-5, 17-19

1 Cor 12:31-13:30

Lk 4:21-30

 

Have you ever fallen in love?

 

I’ve actually given a lot of thought to this concept of being in love this past year. I have really struggled with it. Have I ever truly been in love? When and how? And how do I know? What did it feel like, who was it with? Have I ever truly loved? Have I ever truly been loved? I have tried to look back over the most important relationships in my life and then judged them according to the criteria St. Paul lays out in today’s letter to the Corinthians. There are a lot of descriptions there of what love is and isn’t. Can I truly say that I have loved and been loved that way?

 

Love can seem so ethereal sometimes. I mean, you can’t touch it or see it. We think we can feel it, but it is so much more than a feeling, so much more than our romanticized concepts. We set high expectations for love, much of it formed by what we see, read and hear in movies, books, and music. We seem to be obsessed with love, especially with being loved, but we so often miss the mark when it comes to understanding or defining it, and I believe so many broken relationships and feelings of depression and lack of meaning in our lives can be traced to our unreal expectations of love. Can we ever live up to the true definition of love?

 

Jon Sweeney, in his book, Cloister Talks, recounts a conversation he had with Fr. Luke, a Trappist monk, around the question of love. Fr. Luke said, “There’s clearly enormous potential, and a desperate market, for real love in the world. Love, real love, is far more rare than violence. And real love is more personally dangerous than violence.” He went on to say, “You suffer it, which means that becoming open so as to truly love leads to a new depth of life, and that depth includes pain. The happy-go-lucky-I-love-everyone sort of blather makes no sense really. To love everyone can sometimes amount to truly loving no one. Jesus said that to love is to make yourself personally vulnerable. Hospitality, for instance, does not simply mean a bowl of soup and a place to sleep, but also an open heart. To care for the stranger is to be open to him, to be willing to be wounded by him. “

 

I remember the moment my first child was born. I don’t believe that I knew the meaning of love until then. At that instant I was struck with such an overwhelming feeling of joy, wonder, fear and responsibility, something I hadn’t even felt when I fell in love with my wife. I had just met that little person, and I knew that I would literally die for him. Not just to protect him, I knew I had a new purpose in my life to dedicate everything I am to him. On that day in 1985 I knew for the first time what it felt to have my heart broken, woundedly open. I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything in the world…and I’ve only really duplicated it when I witnessed by daughter and grandsons being born.

 

You know, Jesus feels the same way about you and me. From the moment he first met you, the moment he first conceived of you as a person, unique in all of history, he loved you that fiercely. Just as I felt I was willing and able to actually die for those little babies Jesus was willing and able to actually die for us.

 

Jesus says that there is no greater sign of love than to lay down your life for your friends. Most of us are never called to make the ultimate sacrifice of dying for someone else, but we lay down our lives for those we love every day through our commitment to them and their needs above our own.

 

This passage from 1 Corinthians is the most requested for weddings. And it makes sense, because a wedding is all about love, love, love, and the bride and groom are bathed in such strong emotional feelings for each other, it must be love, right?  But the reality is that in a married relationship we fall in and out of love so many times. Sometimes we feel it so strongly and other times we struggle to find it at all. And most times it is just the soup that we swim in; it’s the framework of our existence.

We always know it’s there but it’s sort of in the background most times, almost like our operating system for living.

 

I actually printed out a copy of that passage today, you know, love is patient, love is kind, etc. and taped it to the wall next to my desk in my office, and for a while I would read it out loud every morning before starting work, just to try to focus on it throughout the day. And there are a lot of beautiful, unselfish sentiments there. But there is also an undercurrent of suffering there. Being patient, not brooding, not holding grudges, assumes that there are so many times that we have to put up with people and situations that hurt us. And that part about rejoicing with the truth so often requires us to have courage to stand up to lies and insincerity and lack of love.

 

We see it in the reading from Jeremiah today. Jeremiah is the prophet of lamentation, and he had a really rough go of it. His calling as a prophet put him at odds with the entire country. He was calling them to repentance and conversion, and they didn’t want to hear that. His life was constantly in danger, but he had to testify to the truth. He was called to love those who hated him and to actually lay down his life for them. Yes, love is patient and love is kind, but love is also tough and cold and hard sometimes. Telling the truth to people you love takes a lot of courage.

 

I imagine it was really hard for Jesus that day in Nazareth, too. He had just returned home after going throughout the countryside preaching, healing and teaching. Word had reached Nazareth of all the wonders he had been performing in other towns, and now he had come into their synagogue with a prophetic message. The blind would see, the deaf would hear, and the poor would have the good news proclaimed to them, and all of this was being fulfilled in their hearing. They thought that was pretty cool, until they realized who it was who was telling them this. Isn’t this just Joseph’s son? Where does he come up with this stuff? And all they really wanted to see were the miracles, anyway. Remember that these were his relatives and friends, and they were probably very incredulous. Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. And so, Jesus hits them hard with the truth. No prophet has honor in his own place, with his own people. And that made them mad. What do you mean you won’t perform miracles here for us, your people, who know you so well? We know you’re nobody special, just the carpenter’s son. And so, as with all prophets, they tried to kill him. That rejection must have hurt Jesus deeply. It doesn’t say in scripture if he ever returned to Nazareth.

 

But he had to admonish them because he loved them. We also are hurt deepest by those we love the most, by those we think should love us the most. I have always found it curious that the one thing St. Paul fails to say is that love forgives and love receives forgiveness. A wise monk once told me that one of the most loving acts we can do is to say we are sorry to someone, because when we ask for forgiveness we are giving them the opportunity to love us. We love most when we give those we love the opportunity to love us in return.

 

And the truest love is to continue to love those who refuse to love us, to open our hearts to the possibility of rejection. I used to think that true love had to be the love that was reciprocated, now I believe it is continuing to love in the face of rejection. Jeremiah still prophesized to those who sought to kill him, and Jesus still died on the cross for his family and friends who rejected him, belittled him, and tried to kill him also.

 

Faith, hope and love. It is love that gives us faith and both love and faith give us hope. And I believe we are desperate for hope, just as we are desperate for love. We need to know that there is something else beyond ourselves, someone who will always be faithful and true to us, even when we fail to be faithful and true to him. Someone who will always have a heart open for us.

 

We image our creator in so many ways, but mainly in our ability to love, because God is love. Take all those attributes St. Paul gives the Corinthians and substitute the word God for love. This is the kind of God we have.

 

God is patient, God is kind.

God is not jealous, God is not pompous,

God is not inflated, God is not rude,

God does not seek his own interests,

God is not quick-tempered, God does not brood over injury,

God does not rejoice in wrongdoing,

But rejoices in the truth.

God bears all things, believes all things,

Hopes all things, endures all things.

 

God never fails

 

 

Single Minded

 

31^st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle B

Dt. 6:2-6

Heb 7:23-28

Mk 12: 28b-34

 

What motivates you? What is the most important thing in your life, the one thing you cannot do without, the one thing that really defines you? What would you be willing to give everything else up to obtain?

 

I myself have a hard time defining what that is. Maybe it’s my personality. I am not a particularly driven person. I do not throw myself fully into my career or a project or even any of my many roles. I am more of a generalist. I like to do a lot of things and many things interest me, but I do not get my sense of purpose out of the things I do. I tend to get it out of my relationships. Maybe you’re same way or maybe you do have things in your life that you are so passionate about that nothing else matters. If you do I envy you in a way, because I think the people who make the most difference in the world are those who can be single minded.

 

I hear passages like these this today and wonder if it is even possible to be so single minded. How can I love God with all my heart, all my mind, all my soul, and all my strength? Wouldn’t that mean there’s no room for anything else? There is so much going on in my life that demands my attention. I find it difficult enough to love those closest to me with that much devotion and focus. There are so many things that excite me, that make me feel good, and so many other things that worry me, that take up so much energy. How can I even take the time to focus so much of myself on God? And why does God demand such attention and devotion?

 

I would think that many of you are driven by certain goals, goals that you do devote all your heart, mind, soul and strength to. Lofty, important goals. Many of you are very successful in your careers and have acquired lots of wonderful things along the way that are signs of your success. I imagine you have to sacrifice a lot of things to do whatever it takes to get you what you really feel is important in life. But does that make you happy? Is that all there is? Are we really focused on what is truly our purpose here in life? These are questions I hope we all struggle with.

 

And I struggle with this a lot. I can understand how someone can be so driven and focused on earthly things like a career or relationships, but how can we be so focused on a God we cannot see, on a God that is so often overshadowed by all those other things we focus on in our lives? Those things are front and center. I don’t always see God that starkly or obviously. God stuff floats in and out of my thoughts and my days. Sometimes I think of him throughout the day but oftentimes He is pushed into the background by the whirlwind of my life.

 

I spent some time this week pondering what types of people are single minded. I thought of athletes, especially those at high levels whose goal is to win a championship or a gold medal. They visualize themselves winning that medal, they work with coaches and train using the latest techniques and eat special diets. Top athletes have to be that obsessed and focused in order to succeed.

 

I thought of priests and bishops and people living the consecrated life, especially monks. Their days and nights are caught up in God stuff, in prayer and sacrament, service, being there for the people. God is their job, they don’t have all the other things the rest of us do to distract us, right? God is front and center for them all day long, so it’s easier for them.

 

I thought of lovers, especially those in the early stages of their relationships, when all they can think about is their beloved, and it actually hurts physically when they are apart. I thought of those who are suffering. Suffering can really focus you. And I thought of their caregivers, who are focused on the love they have for the person they are caring for. When you have to take care of someone, especially someone who is helpless, you go to extraordinary lengths to organize your life and your time. They become the center of your life.

 

This last week Nancy and I had our one-year old grandson staying with us while our son and his wife were on a trip. Boy, I had forgotten how all-consuming having a toddler is. We had to rearrange our entire lives for him, from baby proofing the house to giving up some of the activities we had wanted to do, to feeding, changing and playing with him on his schedule, not ours. We could never let him out of our sight. Even when he was asleep we listened to him on the baby monitor. I began to see how I might begin to devote all my heart, all my mind, all my strength to someone.

 

And I also witnessed single mindedness in him as he constantly fixated on the dog’s water bowl. Every time we would take him away from it he just crawled back to it, again and again and again. He was obsessed. Maybe that’s what Jesus was talking about when he said that we will not enter the Kingdom unless we become like little children.

 

Can I be obsessed with God? Can I grow in love for Him so that no matter what sidetracks me I keep crawling back, again and again and again? I hope I can. But it will require me giving up all those other things that I have thought to be important and submit to what God wants for my life. It will require not just setting the proper priorities but actually removing and reducing the things that keep me from focusing on God alone. Jesus said to seek first the Kingdom of God, and all its righteousness, and everything else will come to us. Like an athlete, those are the fundamentals we need to master before everything else can happen. We need to lay the foundation of our relationship with God first and firmly, and not worry about the rest so much. It will happen if we submit to His divine will.

 

Both Moses and Jesus ties that submission to understanding and keeping God’s commandments. God ties happiness to keeping his commandments because they are all about how we are to live in relationship, both with God and with one another. We will be happy if we do not steal, kill, covet, or be unfaithful, and other people will also be happy if we don’t do those things. The commandments are natural and true and how we were created to live. If we live as we are created to live then we will be happy. Moses says today that we will grow and prosper the more. Jesus says that if we keep the commandments we will be close to the Kingdom of God.

 

I find it interesting that Jesus does not say that the second commandment is also to love your neighbor with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and with all your strength. He only says to love your neighbor as yourself. But that assumes the same single mindedness we must have for God when it comes to our neighbor. And it also assumes you love yourself with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and with all your strength.

 

It’s all tied together.  Because if you love your neighbor you can’t help but love God. If you love God you cannot help but love your neighbor. If you truly loved yourself as you should you would be loving God. If you love God and your neighbor you will be loving yourself.

 

What motivates you? What is the most important thing in your life, the one thing you cannot do without, the one thing that really defines you? What would you be willing to give everything else up to obtain? Is it God? Is God that important to you? Is life eternal with God the most worthwhile goal you could have? Is it worth giving it all you’ve got?

 

Believe it or not, you and your life are the most important thing to God. God loves you with all his heart, with all his mind, and with all his strength. You are the one thing God chooses not to do without. He was willing to give up his very life for you so that you could have the chance to live forever with Him. That’s God’s goal for you. All you have to do is accept it as your own.

 

 

Go Big!

 

26^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Cycle B

Nm 11:25-29
Jas 5:1-6
Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48

You know, He’s a big god.

Let’s talk a bit about the difference between ideology and theology.

Ideology is a set of principles or beliefs upon which a political system, party or organization is based. And I guess your definition of what makes an ideology good or bad depends on your point of view. We all have our ideologies, we all have a set of principles or beliefs that we hold together with other people, and I think in many ways they bind our society together and keep us connected to one another. That’s a good thing, in general. However, when an ideology becomes more than that and we let it define our self-image and self-expression then that can be unhealthy. People who blindly hold and profess strong beliefs in an ideology are called idealogues. Again, whether or not you think that is a good thing or a bad thing depends on your point of view, but generally we see idealogues as being rigid, dogmatic, and stubborn.

Theology is faith seeking understanding. Theology begins with the humble acknowledgment that we can never truly know the nature of God because God is so other than us, so transcendent. Theology is faith seeking understanding, not faith defining understanding. And theology also has a strong basis in reason and the reality of the created world and persons. It is not blind but actually very open. Theologians really just offer a different way of seeing things, of journeying to God. They will never get to the final answer, at least not in this lifetime. We are all theologians, even though few of us have degrees. We are all taking the faith that we have been given and doing our best to make sense of it and apply it to our lives.

While it is very easy for ideology to become exclusionary and closed, theology  should be more open and broad minded. It is very easy for an ideologue to become convinced that theirs is the correct and true and only way to think, believe and act. Idealogues are so sure of themselves. Theologians are comfortable with ambiguity. Theologians should be willing to be surprised.

Theology is a journey while ideology can come to a sudden, immovable conclusion. We heard it in today’s readings. Stop them, Moses, they’re not part of those of us special people God has chosen to prophesy. Stop them Lord, because they are not part of our little band of apostles. Who do they think they are? The end result may have been the same – the people prophesized and the demons were expelled – but they didn’t do it like we would have. They don’t know you like we do. We are the special ones. We have the secret knowledge and they don’t. Both Moses and Jesus rebuked that way of thinking.

“Whoever’s not with us is against us” seems to be a theme in our society today. We are so polarized. Our political parties are divided, we are split by ethnic group, religion, and class. And we think that we have all the right answers and those who disagree with us, well, it’s either us or them. It’s either/or, black and white, good vs. evil. We believe we have the truth and are beset by people actively opposed to who we are and what we stand for. There is antagonism between ourselves and the others. It’s personal. This is the attitude of idealogues in today’s world. If you don’t think like we do you must be against us. And if that is the case you must be stopped, even destroyed, because you are a threat to us.

But Jesus didn’t say “whoever’s not with us is against us.” He said, “If someone is not against us they’re for us. It may seem like a subtle difference but it’s really not. His is a much bigger idea. It assumes no malice on the part of those who aren’t technically part of our group. It assumes good intent and hope. There are many more people who are not actively against us than are. And while there surely are those who wish Christians ill, most people I think are simply ambivalent or misinformed or ignorant of the gospel. Jesus is saying that there is hope for all those who are not part of the inner circle. They too can enter in.

You know, it’s a big church!

Even within the Church it’s easy sometimes to get caught up in our own little pius thoughts and practices and think that our way of devotion is the only way or the best way. The apostles were like that to a certain extent. They had Jesus all to themselves, and they got jealous when someone else modeled Jesus’ behavior in a way different than theirs. Remember that these were the same guys we heard last week arguing about who among them was the greatest. But even though those other disciples were not part of the twelve, they were still part of the church. Even though those Jewish elders were outside the camp they were still part of the tribe.

I guarantee you that as I have been speaking of ideology and idealogues you have immediately thought that it applies to someone or some group that you are not a part of. You probably thought of a politician or bishop or priest or political party, or even that co-worker who has the wrong bumper sticker on his car. It’s always the other guy, isn’t it, who’s misguided or wrong? We’re doing it right. We are the right thinkers. It’s never us who are the idealogues. But that kind of thinking is exactly what defines idealogues. And so often that attitude causes us to close our hearts not only to what other people are saying or doing, but to people themselves. We paint entire groups of people with the same broad brush, most of the time negatively, and then wonder why they do the same to us.

We should be theologians not idealogues. In the end ideology is more about me than about you. If I’m right then you’re wrong, I’m good and you’re not. It’s easy to hide behind such absolutes, because we feel good about ourselves when we think we have a special knowledge or position. And all too often throughout history we have seen those absolutes ultimately end in violence and oppression. In the end theology is all about the other. Loving our neighbor as ourselves, as Jesus commanded us. That is the definition of a disciple when you strip everything else away. That’s what we need to hear in order to understand our faith more fully.

The psalmist says, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”

We are all called to have open minds and open hearts. We’re all dealing with our own struggles and problems and issues, and yet we are all part of the same tribe of disciples. We’re all in this together. And those folks on the periphery, who are not actively against us but really don’t yet know what they are for or against, are we to write them off as wrong thinkers and outsiders, simply because they aren’t in the same place as us in our faith journey? Of course not. That is what it means to be a prophet. To bring those people into the camp.

We are all called to be prophets through our baptism. The beginning of prophesy is openness to the voice of the Lord. You cannot pass on the word of the Lord if you first do not listen to it and then accept your own individual commission from God to pass it on to those around you. Don’t worry about anybody else. Instead, rejoice that the Lord has bestowed his spirit on so many. Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all! Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets! Wouldn’t that be wonderful? What would the world be like if everyone spoke out the truth of the gospel and then helped one another to live it fully!

It’s a big world, and a big task, but God is bigger.