Homily for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

When we think about God’s Law and Commandments, love is not generally the first thing that comes to mind. Indeed, many people think of God’s words as restrictions on personal freedom. But Our Lord Jesus doesn’t: When asked which of the Commandments is greatest, He speaks immediately of love.

Note, however, that His response to the question put before Him does not come from the Ten Commandments as we know them. He, instead, quotes from the Schema, the prayer that every Jewish man recites as the first thing coming forth from his lips upon rising in the morning:

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is Lord alone. Therefore you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and all your mind.”

The Lord Jesus then adds a second Commandment, even though He was not asked to do so, as He says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

You shall love?

Can a person love simply in response to a command? Isn’t love supposed to be free… open… spontaneous… the stuff of poetry? Perhaps so, in romantic novels, but in real life there’s more to it. For example: when an exasperated Mother says to her son, “Stop teasing your sister!” Isn’t that a command to love?

Love of God, however,  can seem so esoteric as to be impossible to define, and charity toward one’s neighbor can sometimes seem like an unwelcome burden. If we’re going to understand the Commandment to love, and ultimately fulfill it,
we’re going to have to come up with a working definition and some practical examples.

In an other place in the Gospels, Jesus says: “God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God, and God in him.” This verb “to abide” gives us the first clue into love for God. To “abide” does not mean simply “to live with, or to live among,  or to “hang out with”… its ultimate meaning is more radical than that. It implies something more like co-existence, wherein the essence of one’s being is no longer defined in the singular but is expanded into the “Other.”

Here, the Other becomes the raison d’être, the reason for one’s being. And, as Our Lord says of Holy Matrimony: “… they are no longer two, but one flesh.” 

This loving, this abiding, witnessed in the Sacrament of Marriage and in varying degrees in other human relationships, mirrors the love, the abiding within the Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity.

We profess in the Creed that God the Father and God the Son are “consubstantial,” meaning:
+ one in substance
+ one in essence   and 
+ one in being.

This one-ness in substance, essence and being is both lived and expressed in divine love. Saint Augustine explained this insight into the Holy Trinity this way:
+ God the Father is the eternal Lover;
+ God the Son is the eternal Beloved;
+ God the Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son…
so strong, so perfect, that the Love itself is a Person: the Holy Spirit.

Our approach to living this Mystery, to abiding in love for God, is expressed in one of the Prefaces of the Mass when the Priest reads: “… in You we live and move, and have our being.”

Apart from God, there is no life… no movement… no being, because God is the 
+ source of all life
+ the unmoved mover of all Creation
+ the sustainer of our being, now and for all eternity.

Apart from God, love’s imperfections become all too real because God is 
+ the source of all love.
+ the perfection of love to which we aspire
+ the sustainer of perfected love through all eternity.

Saying “Yes” to love in this context is saying “Yes” to our ultimate destiny: an eventual participation in the love between the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity.

For now, though, our human love becomes purified through practice… failure… and renewal, and becomes an earthly means of co-existence with God the Son in the Father’s realm of life on the road to Heaven.

Love, well-lived, provides a preview of our life in Heaven.

Love, then, becomes the fulfillment of the Commandments, but not a replacement for them, because the Commandments give us guidelines for how to love God and to love others. Saint John Paul the Great described the Commandments as “a school of love,” a schematic for relationship, and a means for transformation, so that we can approach the mystery of love in greater innocence of heart and purity of intention.

Love’s imperfection, the result of Original Sin, makes living the Commandments more challenging. But then along comes Our Lord Jesus Christ who, in His life and teaching, shows us how to love the Father
+ with all our heart
+ with all our soul
+ with all our mind.

To do this, He introduces the notion of discipleship, as He says in an other place,“No one comes to the Father except through me.” A hundred years ago, G. K. Chesterton addressed the Lord’s words in alliteration: “This man is either
+ liar
+ lunatic - or -
+ Lord.

Our faith allows us to believe that Jesus is, indeed Lord, and the Son of God, so we can trust His call to discipleship as a means of loving God. Discipleship means a life not only alongside the Lord, but at the very heart of His life.

At the heart of Christ’s life is co-existence with the Father, so that Christ is the meeting point between heaven and earth. Discipleship means living in, and abiding with, God, through an ongoing dialogue with the Father and the Son which we call prayer.

In order to sustain us in prayer, He gives us the Holy Spirit who brings us the Grace to continue when our prayer flags, when God seems distant or silent, or when love for God seems difficult or even impossible.

Then… He gives us the Church, whose structure andTeaching, Tradition and Communal Prayer provide for us a context that enables us to live our discipleship strengthened and empowered by the Sacraments, and our shared struggle for growth in holiness, prayer, and a virtuous life. The Church, then, becomes the meeting point between love of God. and love of neighbor.

The “Yes” in which each individual responds to the call of discipleship is now less endangered by one’s personal weakness, and is strengthened and fulfilled in the Church. So, the Grace from our individual “Yes” increases exponentially in the Church, making the Church and its members stronger in discipleship.

This means, further, that the Church is holier than the sum total holiness of its members, because Christ lives among us, calling each of us to greater love and deeper holiness. This means, even further, that the Church is holy, not because you or I are holy… the Church is holy because Christ is holy, and Christ is here, dwelling among us.

Besides this, the Church is expanded into the Communion of Saints, which includes those in Heaven, who never give up on us, and those in Purgatory who continue to depend upon us.

The Church provides the balance and structure wherein our love for God (a vertical relationship) meets our love for neighbor (a horizontal relationship). These vertical and horizontal dimensions form the Cross upon which Our Savior showed us the most profound meaning of love: divine love divinizing human love. Therefore, the ultimate sign of love for us is not the Valentine heart; it is the Crucifix.

So, to fulfill the Lord’s Command to love, we have to look at human love, friendship, romance, and committed, marital love with an eye to supernatural love, hoping and intending to bring some element of the love of God into each human relationship. Love of neighbor, as imperfect as it may be, provides a means of loving God. Christian Charity is, in a manner of speaking a continuation of the Incarnation of Christ in a limited form. 

Saint Teresa of Calcutta said frequently:
“Christ has no hands but your hands,
no arms but your arms,
no feet but your feet,
no heart but your heart.”

When we love each other, Christ, living in us, is loving the Father. And, we can look to the Saints in heaven: the Saints became saints by using the opportunities for Charity that we sometimes neglect.

To will the good of the other, to the point of self-sacrifice, means that we not only sacrifice time, energy or finances, but sometimes, even our attitudes. If we must err in dealing with our neighbor, we ought to err on the side of mercy, kindness, and generosity, rather than on the side of justice or rigor.

Saint Augustine famously said, “Love — and do what you will.” Though misunderstood, and therefore compromised, by the “free love” movement of the 1960’s, Augustine speaks of something much more demanding: of seeing every person standing before me at any given moment as an opportunity to love the unseen God.

The ultimate purpose of true Christian Charity is to save people from sin and unite them to God.This doesn’t mean that we should be “preachy,” but Christ-like: ready to love God in others even when it is difficult to do.

The Trappist monk Dom Eugene Boylan once described the Lord’s command to love as “the Eighth Sacrament,” meaning there’s Grace in it to empower us in our weakness. To reject the claim our neighbor rightly owns upon our charity is to reject Christ in His poverty, for Christ does not ask of us what He has not already done for us.

We’ll close with these words of Saint Isaac of Stella: “Let us despise nothing that is done for Christ. Let us be ready to serve all, for Christ is one, and Christ is many.”