30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 29, 2017 - Homily - 1
If you’re the type of person who has ever said ‘Just tell me what I need to know’, you’re must love today’s gospel.
And if you learn nothing else about Christianity, listen closely, because in two short commandments in today’s gospel, Jesus summarizes all of God’s laws, instructions and teachings. It’s the benchmark to which we measure all of our actions against the standard set out by Christ. So listen carefully:
1)You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and closely linked to it…
2)You shall love your neighbour as yourself
These 2 commandments are the ‘sound bites’ that can anchor our faith – the foundation on which our Christian life is to be built. It’s how we transform our natural inclination to love into something much greater which has meaning and purpose. It directs the unharnessed love within all us toward the greater glory of God.
So, let’s unpack this a bit…
What does it mean to love? We’re not talking about some hokey sentiment - real love is the gift of giving oneself for the good of the other – it is wholly oriented and directed to the welfare and benefit of others. Love is completely self-giving and self-sacrificing because it’s giving of ourselves completely and without reservation.
And to better understand this definition, it’s helpful to look at what the opposite of love is – and the opposite of love is selfishness. The opposite of love is a focus entirely on self. It’s a selfish and prideful state of being which is inward oriented rather than outwardly directed, and this is the attitude which leads us into all of our sinful desires such as greed, jealously, envy, lust, and even a complete contempt for others. It’s this inward focus that leads to all sinfulness, and ultimately, will lead to sadness and perhaps even despair when we come to the inevitable realization that focus on self rather than others leads us only to emptiness.
Love, on the other hand, leads to fulfillment. We have been made in the image of God, and therefore our surest path to joy and happiness is to emulate the love of God, which is an all-encompassing and generous love. Its focus is entirely outward oriented rather than inward focused, and is built for relationship – true happiness is built on a love that is directed outside of ourselves. As it is often said, it is only in giving that we can ever truly receive – the more we love, the more fulfilled we become.
Pope Francis is a good example for us of one who spends himself completely, and the result is the joy that we see radiating from him. The media is infatuated with this guy, and I don’t think they understand why – they’re infatuated with him because they are drawn to his joyfulness which he possesses because he has found fulfilment – and he has found fulfilment by harnessing his natural desire for love and outwardly directing that desire toward God, and flowing from that, directing that love toward others. If we want to see the opposite of this joy which love cultivates, just read a story or two about a Hollywood celebrity who has gone down the road of shallow selfish desire to see where that path leads.
--
So, how do we love God? We love him by getting to know him! Because the more we learn about the nature of God, the more time we spend in prayer, the more time we spend in worship as we are right now at Sunday Mass, the deeper we come to love The One who asks us to address him as ‘Our Father’. That terminology of God as Father isn’t coincidental – our God desires a personal relationship with us, and that relationship is as children of our heavenly Father who cares for us like a Dad, who gives entirely of himself for us – to the point of sending Jesus in the flesh in order to offer the ultimate sacrifice of his life on the cross in the perfect expression of self-giving love.
And from this 1st command naturally flows the second command to love our neighbours. Through loving God comes a desire to love as God loves – to love like him in an outward rather than an inward direction.
We call to mind the fact that all people are created in God’s image and truly are God’s children,
and from this fact realize that life is absolutely precious from conception to natural death – and to love others is to reach out to those in need, and especially the most vulnerable. Our love speaks most loudly through our deeds and actions.
It’s important also to reflect on the interconnectedness of these 2 commandments of love of God and neighbour. There are two commandments so that we always keep things in balance. It’s tempting to go too far in one direction and spend all of our time in prayer and spiritual pursuits while ignoring our call to social justice; or the other extreme of spending all of our time in pursuits of social justice while ignoring our spiritual lives and our relationship with God. One informs the other, and flows from the other. It’s a ‘both and’ situation, and not an ‘either or’. Balance is necessary, and Jesus reflects that in the 2 primary commands.
At every Mass, we live out the 1st command by loving God with all of our hearts, minds and souls. We recharge our spiritual batteries in worship and prayer, and then we are commissioned to go forth to adhere to the 2nd command after the final blessing before we leave, the priest or deacon gives the great commission such as to ‘go forth, glorifying the Lord by your life’ – a great commission to live out your faith in the world.
And that great commission is expressed in the formula found in the two great commandments 1) love God; and 2) love neighbour. There is a natural human disposition to love – by adhering to the 2 great commands, Christ gives us a instruction manual to harness this natural human desire and strengthen it, and in the process assign to it a greater meaning which we receive from God, the source of love itself. These two commands are what give our life meaning, and when lived out, bring light to a world so desperately in need of an authentic love that conquers all.