Friday, May 24, 2019

Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter

(Acts 15:22-31; John 15:12-17)

An old song said, “Love makes the world go round.”  A high school teacher challenged this idea.  He told his students that love does not make the world go round.  Rather, he said, money does.  He was referring to the idea that money motivates most people to work which, in a way, sets the world in motion.  An astrophysicist would give another answer.  She would claim that the earth spins on its axis because of the way it was formed.  The swirling gases and dust from which the earth was formed started the rotation which has never ceased. 

 

With today’s gospel in mind we might ask ourselves, what does love do then after all?  Love puts us in harmony with God.  Since God’s very being is love, we share God’s life when we love others.  There is the difficulty of how to identify true love.  St. Augustine can help us here.  He once preached, “What does love look like? It has hands to help others.  It has feet to hasten to the poor and needy.  It has eyes to see misery and want.  It has ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men and women.  That is what love looks like.”

As we all know, it is easy to talk about love but quite another thing to live.  The novelist Dostoyevsky wrote that love in action is “a harsh and dreadful thing.”  It requires sacrifices that we would be loath to make except for the good of the beloved.  For God, the greatest good, we should be ready to make great sacrifices.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Wednesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

(I Corinthians 12:31-13:13; Luke 7:31-35)

A preacher once described the difficulty in preaching about love.  He said something like, “The only place where we are sure what love means is in tennis.  And there it means ‘nothing at all.’”  St. Paul has some difficulty in speaking about love.  In his famous “ode to love” making up the first reading today he makes no attempt to define it.  Rather he gives a phenomenological description telling us first the importance of love, then its similarities and dissimilarities, and finally its uniqueness. 

St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed that love animates the other virtues.  This means, as Paul illustrates in the text, that faith and generosity will come to nothing if love does not shape their ends.  Love saves faith from being ideology and makes it the way to eternal life.  Similarly, it rescues generosity from wastefulness and allows us to resemble God, our Father.

Paul never equates God with love like the First Letter of John, but he seems on the verge of this conclusion when he writes that of the three enduring virtues, love is the greatest.  Evidently, even in the Beatific Vision there will be need of faith, probably because God is an incomprehensible mystery, always beyond our understanding.  We may wonder about the need for hope if in everlasting life the human person has fulfilled her or his goal.  In any case, love is certainly the greatest theological virtue because it alone participates in God’s supreme activity.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Tuesday after Epiphany

(I John 4:7-10; Mark 6:34-44)

A guest at a soup kitchen once questioned the affection of a volunteer who served him.  “Miss Bea,” the man said, “do you love me?”  The wife and mother replied, “Yes, Henry, I love you.”   “Miss Bea,” the man went on, “would you come home with me?”  “It ain’t that kind of love, Henry,” the woman objected.

There are different ways of loving which the wise person distinguishes.  But love itself is a thrust for unity.  Married couples express love for one another in varied ways, especially by the act of physical union.  The volunteer showed her love for the poor man by caringly serving his need to eat.  Where the first reading today says, “God is love,” it means that God desires to be one with everything that is.  God’s love transcends natural love in that its scope includes the undesirable.  For example, God loves us in our sinfulness.  Indeed, God desires us so much that He came to live among us and died so that we might partake of His life. 

God has also graced us with His love.  We can desire to be with God even though we cannot see Him.  Our desire to love Him leads us to care for all His creatures even though they have little to do with us and, indeed, even though they mistreat us.  Choosing to love both God and others, we participate in God’s own life.  This is eternal life.  It begins here in our loving both appropriately and universally and not, as some think, in death.

Monday, June 4, 2012

Monday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary time

(2 Peter 1:2-7; Mark 12:1-12)

The Greek language has different words for love. Love is eros when it is acquisitive of one’s own benefit. Lovers are known for this kind of love. Love is charis when it seeks mutual spiritual benefit. Charis is characteristic of love between friends who count on one another in thick and thin. The purest kind of love is agape. Agape seeks nothing for oneself but only the other’s betterment because the other already possesses some good. God loves humans out of agape. The reading from Peter today offers Christians a strategy for developing perfect love.

But it must be said that agape is not strictly a human enterprise. God’s grace must precede it as the author indicates in the initial verse. Still it requires effort, not to complement God’s work but to live it. In a series of calls to mounting sacrifice – virtue, knowledge, self-control, endurance, devotion, and mutual affection -- Peter shows his readers how their faith can end in perfect love or agape.

Some may balk at Peter’s call. The goal, after all, is not the accumulation of either fortune or fun. Many will begin the quest and flag along the way because of the increasing difficulty of the challenge. We hope to persevere – to become saints like Jesus himself. But if we too falter in the trial, we still can turn to Jesus for mercy.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

(Micah 5:1-4a; Matthew 1:1-16.18-23)

Recently Facebook began a thoughtful service. Each Sunday it sends members a notice with the names of friends who will have a birthday that week. Many members will in turn send their friends an email saying that they are glad they are alive. This message is very close to how philosopher Joseph Pieper defines the meaning of love. According to Pieper, love is precisely to receive from another the confirmation, “It’s good that you are; it’s wonderful that you exist.”

Today the Church expresses her love for Mary, the mother of Jesus. We celebrate her birthday saying, “It’s (very) good that you are alive.” We love Mary, first and foremost, for being the instrument by which Jesus, the Savior, came into the world. Her consent allowed his being born and her care provided him a choice environment for growth. Second, we love her because she has showed us how to follow Jesus. As his perfect disciple, she listened to, meditated upon, and acted on the word of God. Finally, we love her for interceding for us before the Godhead. We remember how she told her son about the need for more wine at the wedding feast and confidently bring our particular needs to her attention.

Monday, August , 2010

Monday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

(Ezekiel 1:2-5.24-28c; Matthew 17:22-27)

Justice is the virtue by which we give to others their due. It is essential for harmonious social life. Love is the virtue by which we join ourselves spiritually if not physically to others. Family life would be inconceivable without it. Both virtues have natural and supernatural dimensions. Natural justice, for example, assures that we compensate properly those who work for us. Supernatural justice moves us to secure the rights of all people, whether or not we owe them anything personally. Pursuing supernatural justice, which is bestowed only through God’s grace, we merit everlasting life.

Parents, of course, love their children. Because they naturally identify their children’s welfare with their own, they make it a priority. Supernatural love moves people to identify with and to seek the good for God and others, beyond family and friends. We see supernatural love operative in the lives of the saints like Katherine Ann Drexel who spent her fortune and her life on the construction of missions for poor minorities in the United States.

The gospel today presents a negative instance of natural justice and a positive instance of supernatural love. Jesus instructs Peter that justice does not require him to pay the temple tax because he is the son of God for whom the temple was constructed. However, because supernatural love moves him not to give scandal to tax collectors, Jesus provides for the paying of the tax. In paying the tax voluntarily, Jesus demonstrates in a rather banal way that he is indeed of divine origin.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter

(Acts 15:22-31; John 15:12-17)

An old song says, “Love makes the world go round.” Once a high school teacher, challenging this idea, told his students that love does not make the world go round. Rather, he said, money does. Of course, he was referring to the fact that money motivates most people to work which, in a way, sets the world in motion. An astrophysicist would give another answer. She would inform that the earth was set in rotation at its foundation by the swirling gases and dust of which it was formed, and that rotation has never ceased.

With today’s gospel in mind we might ask ourselves, what does love do then after all? Love puts us in harmony with God. Since God’s very being is love, we share God’s life when we love others. There is the difficulty of how to identify true love. St. Augustine can help us here. He once preached, “What does love look like? It has hands to help others. It has feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men and women. That is what love looks like.”

Homilette for Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Christmas Weekday

(I John 4:7-10; Matthew 6:34-44)

A guest at a soup kitchen once questioned the affection of a volunteer who served him. “Miss Bea,” the man said, “do you love me?” The wife and mother replied, “Yes, Henry, I love you.” “Miss Bea,” the man went on, “would you come home with me?” “It ain’t that kind of love, Henry,” the woman objected.

There are different ways of loving which the wise person distinguishes. But there is only one love which is a thrust for unity. Married couples express love for one another in varied ways, most especially by the act of physical union. The volunteer showed her love for the poor man by her service. Where the first reading today says, “God is love,” it means that God desires to be one with everything that is. God’s love transcends natural love in that its scope includes the undesirable. For example, God loves us in our sinfulness. Indeed, God desires us so much that He came to live among us and died so that we might partake of His life.

God has also graced us with His love. We can desire to be with God even though we cannot see Him. We can also love others even though they have little to do with us and, indeed, even though they mistreat us. Choosing to love both God and others, we participate in God’s own life. This is eternal life. It begins here in our loving both appropriately and universally and not, as some think, in death.

Homilette for Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Wednesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

(Luke 14:25-33)

Gospel commentators call Jesus’ shocking statement that his followers are to hate their families a “Semiticism.” This means that it was a way of expressing oneself in the Semitic language that Jesus spoke. Evidently his native Aramaic did not use comparatives. For Jesus to indicate that his disciples have to love him more than their families, he has to say that they must love him and hate their families. Of course, he does not mean that they are to scorn their loved ones. After all, how could Jesus, who taught the primacy of love of God and neighbor, mean that we are to literally hate those who are closest to us?

But some of us may have difficulty with the idea of even loving Jesus more than our families and close friends. “How can he expect that of us?” we might ask. To answer the question we should make a distinction. To love Jesus above all is not to say that we always feel greater affection for him than for other loved ones. Although we are to love him with all our heart, this does not crowd out affection for others. Rather it means that we set our hearts on doing his will first and foremost. Out of admiration of his goodness and gratitude for his sacrifice, we give him our primary allegiance.

The result of such a relationship with Jesus enables us to love others not less but more. To alter Shakespeare’s Othello’s famous line, we can love family and friends both wisely and well. Allegiance to Jesus means doing what is truly good for all. We will not confuse indulgence with care and submit to the whims of children. We will not accept the prejudices that pervaded our parents’ home but treat all people with respect. We will not allow communication with our spouses to shrivel when we become aware that they think differently but always make an effort to convey our deepest feelings.

Homilette for Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Wednesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

(I Corinthians 12:31-13:13)

A preacher once remarked about the difficulty in preaching about love. He said something like, “The only place we are sure that we know what we are talking about when we talk about ‘love’ is in tennis. And there ‘love’ means ‘nothing at all.’” We might notice how St. Paul suggests the difficulty in speaking about love by not attempting to define it in his famous “hymn to love” that comprises the first reading today. Rather he gives a phenomenological description telling us first the importance of love, then its similarities and dissimilarities, and finally its uniqueness. Let’s examine each of these issues.

St. Thomas Aquinas affirmed that charity or “love of friendship” animates all the other virtues. This means what Paul illustrates in the text. Eloquence and foresight, even faith and generosity will come to nothing if love does not shape their ends. We might say with Sartre that human life is a useless passion, if love did not provide it a transcendent purpose.

We get a glimpse of love’s nature by noting how caring it is of the other person. Love not only concerns itself with the other’s needs (“patient” and “kind”) but also avoids causing the other distress (“not inflated,” “not rude,” etc.). Joseph Pieper defines love as affirmation of another so that one can say, “It’s good that you exist!” This may sound like a weak-kneed definition, but it is meant to be comprehensive and inclusive like Paul with his lists of positive and negative adjectives for love.

Paul never equates God with love like the First Letter of John, but he seems on the verge of this conclusion when he writes that of the three enduring virtues, love is the greatest. Evidently, even in the Beatific Vision there will be need of faith, probably because God is an incomprehensible mystery, always beyond our understanding. We may wonder about the need for hope if in everlasting life the human person has fulfilled her or his goal. In any case, love is certainly the greatest theological virtue because it alone participates in God’s supreme activity.

Homilette for Monday, September 15, 2008

Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows

(John 19:25-27)

It is tempting to hear these nearly final words of Jesus as an only son’s concern for his widowed mother after he dies. However, the context calls for a different and perhaps richer interpretation. Throughout John’s Gospel, Jesus does not look back to his childhood family but beyond to his divine one. Here we can see him giving his mother to his beloved disciple and his beloved disciple to his mother so that they too might be part of God’s eternal family. Their coming together will initiate the community called Church as they become adopted children of God and heirs of places in the heavenly household. When Jesus expires, John says that he “hand(s) over his spirit.” We may consider his mother and beloved disciple as the recipients of that spirit springing the Church into existence.

Yet Mary is still “the Mother of Sorrows.” Artists never depict this moment of church formation as a happy one. Rather they show Mary with tears in her eyes and, sometimes, John too distressed to show his face. It is not that they, or we in similar moments of loss, are too much part of the world to feel satisfaction. Rather, they have both loved Jesus so long and well that being deprived of his presence breaks their hearts. Nevertheless, Mary and the beloved disciple provide us with a lesson about love. Worthy human love always makes us want to be with the object of our love. Such love (eros in Greek) grows into divine love (agape in Greek or caritas in Latin) when God’s grace enables us to let go of the beloved knowing that He will reunite him or her to us forever.

Homilette for January 10, 2008

Thursday after Epiphany

(I John 4:19-5:4)

In a movie adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables, a prisoner writes a love letter to his wife. He is a largely unlettered man without grandiose ideas so he only repeats “I love you” over and over again. The first letter of John, from which we read today, may sound almost as simplistic. However, its meaning is as profound as its lesson is worth repeating.

The author of the letter knows from bitter experience how the world can corrupt a person. For this reason he underlines the need to keep God’s commandments. But, he says, this is not a difficult task because the essence of the commandments is love which brings its own delight. “Not necessarily true,” we might object from our own experience trying to please difficult persons. But John finds as the object of love the virtuous brothers and sisters of the faith community. In caring for these good people, he concludes, the person fulfills the natural desire to return God’s love shown in the gift of Christ.

As defrocked Christmas trees dot empty lots, Christmas becomes a flickering memory. Our resolve to live each day with the love we felt on Christmas may have become similarly vague. John’s persistent reminders that God has given us Christ keep us from forgetting about the desirability of loving.

Homilette for December 24, 2007

Monday, December 24, 2007

(Luke 2:67-79)

A boy returned home from school recently to tell his grandmother that Jesus was not born in December but in March. The date, he explained, was changed for commercial reasons. It is likely that the lad is partly right. No one today knows exactly when Jesus was born. It may have been during the month of March or any of the other months.

The indications that the gospels give regarding a Jesus’ birthday – a census decreed by Caesar Augustus and a strangely moving star – appear to be more theological than historical markers. The Church (not Macy’s) placed the date at the end of December because this too conforms to what we believe about Christ. As Zechariah refers to him in the gospel this morning, Jesus is “the dawn...that shine(s) on those in darkness and the valley of death and guide(s) our feet into the way of peace.” In other words, Jesus is like the sun that appears every morning and especially like the sun of late December that reverses, in the northern hemisphere at least, the trend of decreasing daylight throughout summer and fall.

Comparing Jesus to the sun helps us appreciate his significance. Just as the sun provides heat and light so that we may live naturally so Jesus provides us love and truth so that we might have a relationship with God. Without Jesus our love would be like a firecracker that sparkles for a moment and then fizzles until it becomes cold ash. Without Jesus we would wander in the darkness of sin choosing to do, like a dog feasting on rotten meat, what can harm us. The date on which Jesus was born is not important. What is important – indeed absolutely necessary – is that Jesus is with us.

Homilette for Wednesday, November 7, 2007

Wednesday, XXXI Week of Ordinary Time

(Romans 13:8-10, Luke 14:25-33)

Gospel commentators call Jesus’ saying that his followers are to hate their families a “Semiticism.” This term means a way of expressing oneself in the Semitic language that Jesus spoke. Evidently his language did not use comparatives. For Jesus to mean that his disciples have to love him more than their families, he has to say that they love him and hate their families. He does not mean that they are to scorn their loved ones. After all, how could Jesus, who taught about the primacy of love long before St. Paul wrote about it, mean that we are to literally hate those who mean the most to us?

But still some of us may have trouble with the idea of loving Jesus more than our children and our parents, to say nothing of our spouses. “How could we do that?” we might ask. The answer is both simple and promising. First, we can love Jesus above all because he is so good – really perfect. Then it is true that by loving Jesus above all, we actually love our children, our parents, and our spouses not less but more. Allegiance to Jesus means doing what is truly good for all. We will not confuse indulgence with care and give in to the whims of our children. We will not accept the prejudices that lived in our parents’ home but treat all people with respect. We will not allow communication with our spouses to shrivel when we become aware that they think differently but always make an effort to express our thoughts and feelings.

Homilette for Tuesday, October 30, 2007

You will find postings for weekdays October 29 and 30 below.

Tuesday, XXX Week of Ordinary Time

(Romans 8:12-17)

Hope has been compared to a little girl walking between her two bigger sisters – faith and love. At times it seems that faith and love have to drag hope along. That is, believing and giving we can find enough satisfaction in life that we do not consider the reward of heaven. Still at other times it is just the opposite. Hope seems to run ahead leading faith and love along.

A woman has cancer that may be incurable. She has unfailingly practiced her faith, and it has provided many blessings. Her husband loves her deeply. Her three children respect her sincerely. Her five grandchildren provide her consolation for the future. For a long time then faith and love have dominated any consideration of eternity. Now, however, hope has to take over.

The possibility of imminent death rivets our attention on the great questions of faith. Is there life after death? When will I experience it? Is it possible that I am not worthy? Hope moves us to believe in God and to use the rest of our time to serve Him. As St. Paul indicates in the first reading, we are not sure of what eternal life consists. We do not see it like we might see pictures of the city where our company is sending us to work. We can only trust in God that the sufferings we now face – whether it be the trials of cancer or the loneliness with which that many old people live -- will end in glory.

Homilette for Thursday, October 25, 2007

Thursday, XXIX week of Ordinary Time

(Luke 12:49-53)

With wildfires blazing in San Diego County as we hear this gospel, some may think that Jesus’ words about bringing a fire to earth are presently being fulfilled. But, of course, burning homes and destroying nature are not what Jesus has in mind here. Nor should we take him literally when he says that he has not come to bring peace to the world. Jesus remains the “Prince of Peace” whose coming was foretold by Zachariah as guiding the people into “the path of peace.”

The fire that Jesus starts is the desire in us to be morally good. Touched by his Spirit, we will no longer content ourselves with sexual gratification, monetary reward, or people snapping to our command. Instead, we will seek to be like God Himself who bends down to lift up the lowly. The division that Jesus envisions is not only the break-up of households into those who are for and against him but also the struggle that goes on with ourselves. We will resist the passionate call of our corrupted nature to sin.

Taking up the struggle to imitate God’s virtue, we begin to see how Jesus really does bring peace. With continued effort we are no longer divided within. Passionate craving disgusts us more than entices us. Seeking the good becomes our objective at every moment. We can even extend an olive branch to our family members who alienated themselves from us in our pursuit of righteousness. We see that the fire that Jesus has set in the world is the flame of love purifying us so that we might enjoy eternal life.

Homilette for Thursday, January 3, 2007

The Memorial of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (John 1)

In Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment a killer falls in love with a prostitute. He eventually confesses his crime and is sent to prison in Siberia. She follows him not because she enjoys punishment but because she loves him. The same self-sacrificing love explains why John’s disciples decide to stay with Jesus. They must realize that when John calls Jesus “the lamb of God,” he means that Jesus will be slaughtered to redeem the world. But they follow him despite the likelihood that they will have to suffer with him.

We can see the same self-sacrifice for Christ’s sake in Elizabeth Ann Seton. She was a widow with children. Yet she gave up social prominence to become a Catholic and eventually a religious sister. It is not that she desired to suffer the rigor of religious life but she accepted the discipline to follow Christ.

None of us seeks suffering for its own sake. We might choose to suffer a bit in order to make accomplish some goals as when we go hungry to lose a few pounds. We also choose to suffer for Christ. Out of love for him we get out of bed early in the morning to come to Mass. Out of love for him we cheerfully bear with the difficulties that the whole day brings us.