What is Love...Baby Don't Hurt Me

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

If you were to say the phrase, “What is love?” to a certain generation of people, they would immediately think (or say or sing), “Baby, don’t hurt me,” and would, if not too beyond the pale, probably start bobbing their head side to side (and even if they couldn’t, they would want to).  It’s almost a conditioned response, like Pavlov’s dog drooling when a bell rings.

Today Jesus gives us the two greatest commandments, and they both focus on love.  The greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind.  The second commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves.  In both of these cases, we are called to love.  This makes perfect sense, as, if we look at the object in all Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses, the first three deal with love of God (thou shalt not have other gods besides me; thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; and the Sabbath rest), while the other seven deal with love of neighbor (Honor thy father and mother; thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife or thy neighbor’s goods).  

In theory, love is easy.  We all probably know that loving God is most important (especially because we’re here at Mass), and we know we need to love our neighbor.  In the theoretical realm we are with Jesus 100%.  But as it gets down to the nitty gritty, things can seem much more complicated.  We can truly start to wonder, “What is love?”

After all, we use the word for lots of things and people: I love my parents; I love my spouse; I love my siblings; I love my friends; I love pizza.  But if we love pizza in the same way we love our parents, something is off.  And if we love our friends in the same way we love our spouse, that tends to lead to trouble.  So love is not so clear a word to understand.

Love today often means a kind of respect for another person’s choices whatever they may be, as long as that person’s choices do not affect me personally.  Love seems to mean that anything goes, as long as person really desires something or someone, no matter what objective reality, or even the Church or Bible says.  People can try to rationalize all sorts of behavior by stating that God loves us, as if the love of God turns a blind eye to anything fallen or sinful.  People are very quick to say, as they’re rationalizing something contrary to Catholic faith or morality, “God loves me as I am,” to which I quickly respond, “But He loves you too much to leave you as you are.”  God’s love is a divinizing love; it is a love that seeks to make us like Himself, which means it is a love that calls us to reject all that is sinful and broken in us.  We cannot appeal to the love of God to support the killing of an elderly person in euthanasia; we cannot appeal to the love of God to support sex outside of marriage; we cannot appeal to the love of God to support doing that which is contrary to God’s law or the natural law.

And that divinizing love, because it is who God is, does not stop with God.  It begins with God, and the love we have for God has to be the most important, but to truly be the love of God, it also has to extend to our brothers and sisters.  St. John says it this way in his first letter, “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.  […]whoever loves God must also love his brother.”  We are given a challenging example of that in our first reading: “‘You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.  […] If ever you wrong them and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry.’”  Now, before you tune me out because you think I’m going to support one political party or another, let me make this clear: I am not supporting a Republican or Democratic Party platform.  The Church supports both the right to immigrate, as well as the right of states to legitimately limit immigration.  The following are quotes from Paragraph 2241 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent that they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. […]

Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption.  Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens. [emphasis original]

We can civilly discuss all day current policies in place in the United States.  But the key is whether or not our approach to immigrants is one based in love.  And as Catholics we should especially consider the plight of immigrants, even as we protect our own country, because the words from Exodus could very easily be changed to: You shall not molest or oppress an alien, for you were once aliens from Italy, or Ireland, or Germany, or Poland.  If we can stand before the judgment seat of God with a clear conscience on the way we speak about and treat immigrants, and that it was based on love of God and neighbor, then we have nothing to fear.  But so often, our idea of love, whether it comes to immigrants, or to other moral issues, needs to be purified by the Word of God and the teachings of the Church, so that it truly reflects the love of God which seeks to make us like Himself.

Invites, RSVPs, and Attendance

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ironically, as I was preparing for the homily this past week, I received an invitation in the mail for a wedding that is being celebrated in July.  Talk about the Word of God being active and alive!

With Facebook, there are more and more events to which we can be invited.  Sometimes there are still the paper invitations, especially with weddings, but I have seen more and more people go to online invitations for open houses, parties, and we use it on our parish Facebook page for different events happening in our parish.

An invitation is, firstly, a sign that we are important to the person doing the inviting.  I remember when I was helping to plan my ordination reception with my parents.  There were all the considerations about whom to invite.  Because you can’t only invite one second cousin.  If you invite one, you have to invite them all.  But sometimes you’re closer with some family members than with others.  So if we’re invited, it is a sign that we are important enough to get the invite.  And I think that’s one of the takeaways from the Gospel reading today: God considers each of us important enough to invite to His wedding feast.  That’s no small thing.  God wants each of us to share eternal life with him.  

Isaiah describes that wedding feast using the image of the mountain of the Lord.  There will be the best of foods and the best of wines.  The quality of the food and wine is so good that Isaiah does something common when something is too good for words: he repeats himself.  But beyond the food and wine, on the mountain of the Lord there is no more death, no more tears, and no more reproach (which is a word we don’t hear that much and means “the expression of disapproval or disappointment”).  The day of the mountain of the Lord is a day of rejoicing, because God has saved us.  And this reading is one of the suggested readings for funerals, because the mountain of the Lord should be the goal of our life, and it’s where we hope our loved ones go after death.

But, another takeaway from the Gospel is that not everyone RSVPs to the invitation in the affirmative.  There are people who decline the invite for things of lesser importance: farming, business, or even just ignoring the invite altogether.  Even though invited, they don’t give much weight to the relationship with the person who is inviting them to rejoice with him and his family.  And when there is more room for guests, because so many people have not accepted the invitation, the king invites others, some who are good, but even some who are bad.  Just because we are invited does not mean we go.  We have to choose to go to the wedding; simply having the invitation is not enough.

And lastly, Jesus talks about one of the guests not having the proper garments for a wedding.  Even though the king was glad to invite the good and bad alike, there were expectations about proper dress for the wedding.  And the one who did not have the proper garment was thrown out into the darkness, in the place of “wailing and grinding of teeth.”  When I hear those words about a garment, I immediately think of the words that I tell a child or adult at baptism: “you have become a new creation, and have clothed yourself in Christ.  See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity.  With your family and friends to help you by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlasting life of heaven.”  We are told at our baptism, when we receive our invitation, that on the mountain of the Lord, at the Lord’s wedding feast, there is a proper clothing requirement, and that requirement is supposed to white to represent our purity from sin.  Reconciliation is, as it were, bleach, that, by God’s grace, washes clean our baptismal garment that we have soiled by our disobedience to God.

So often, evangelicals will ask the question, “Are you saved?”, and our Gospel helps us answer that question with a Catholic answer.  We were saved when we were baptized, when we accepted the invitation from Jesus to attend His wedding feast in heaven as we died with Christ in the waters of baptism that freed us from sin and made us children of God and members of the Church.  We are being saved as we, by the grace of God, try to keep our baptismal garment clean and daily act in such a way as to show that we want to attend the wedding at the end of time.  And we hope to be saved when we are invited to the banquet hall, with the proper wedding garment, and are able to rejoice with Jesus in the Kingdom of Heaven forever.  

Being baptized isn’t enough.  Baptism is the invitation to the wedding feast.  We have to respond to the invitation that Jesus extends to us each day of our life.  Because Jesus also says at the end of our Gospel, that, “‘Many are invited, but few are chosen.’”  Let’s not ignore this invitation, or act in such a way that shows that we have better things to do than to go attend the wedding feast of the Lamb.  Let us make our own the words that we hear at each Mass: “Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.”

Department of Redundancy Department

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sometimes hearing something a second time is just annoying.  How many times has a parent responded to a nagging or whining child who keeps bringing up the same issue, “I heard you the first time”?  Or sometimes we might hear deja vu all over again, which is saying the same thing twice, since deja vu colloquially means all over again.  Or, in seminary, if someone said something redundant, we would snarkily ask if he was from the Department of Redundancy Department.  

Today we hear a very similar parable twice: from Isaiah in the first reading and from Jesus in the Gospel.  But this is not Jesus being redundant; this is one of those times when someone says something twice in order to stress its importance.  And the chief priests and the elders of the people would have recognized the parable as Jesus told it.  They would know what it means.  

And for us, who have heard this story numerous times, we can probably intuit the meaning fairly easily.  But one point that is the basis for the entire parable, is to whom the vineyard belongs.  In Isaiah’s version, Isaiah talks about a friend who has a vineyard, who does all the work, but the fruit of his work is not what he expected.  In Jesus’ version, it is still a vineyard, but he talks about the people working it, rather than the fruit that is produced.  But in both cases, God is the clear owner of the vineyard.  It does not belong to Isaiah; it does not belong even to the tenants or the servants.  God owns the vineyard, and he expects it to produce proper fruit.

So often we can think of the Church, the Body of Christ, as ours.  In the proper context, we rightfully say that we, the People of God, are the Church.  But the body cannot do anything without a head; and Jesus is the head of the Church, while we are the other members.  We cannot do anything without Jesus.  Sometimes we think that the Church can teach whatever she wants.  But that’s only true if we are the owners of the vineyard.  If, instead, we are merely tenants, or those housed in the vineyard, than we don’t get to make decisions about the structure of the property, or what fruit we want to grow.  We only get to work in the vineyard.

Right now it is very popular to say that the Church needs to change her teaching to keep up with the times.  We should allow women to be priests; we should stop talking about homosexual acts as sinful; we should recognize homosexual marriage; we should let people get divorced and remarried without an annulment.  But that very approach betrays a lack of understanding about who owns the vineyard.  God has revealed to us, through Sacred Scripture and by the Holy Spirit guiding the Pope and the bishops in what they teach as to what we are to believe and how we are to live, what is His will for His vineyard, the Church.  We cannot change it, because the vineyard is not ours.  The Pope and the bishops cannot simply make up what we are to believe or how we are to live.  If they teach something contrary to what we call the Deposit of Faith, the body of beliefs that have been handed on to us from the apostles and their successors, then they can either be reprimanded, or sometimes even lose communion with the Church.  

But God doesn’t expect us to only guess what His plan is for His vineyard.  He has given us the prophets to tell us His will; He has given us Jesus who is the full revelation of the Father, who leads us into all truth; and He has given us the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, to help us to know what to believe and how we are to live.  Certainly there have been some bad tenants: there have been bad laypeople, bad priests, bad bishops, and even a few bad popes!  But God’s vineyard has remained intact.  And we have an unbroken line of consistent teaching from Old Testament through the New Testament right down to 2017.  

Sometimes that has put the Church against what is common or what is popular.  The Romans certainly didn’t want us to claim there is only one God, and that the emperor was not God; certainly there have been cases for over 2,000 years where it would have been much easier not to follow Jesus’ teaching on marriage and family life; Turkish and Arab Armies during different empires tried to invade Europe and supplant Christianity by force with Islam; France, the so-called eldest daughter of the Church tried to destroy the Church and supplant it during the French Revolution; the Mexican federal government and local American governments tried to make Catholicism illegal or irrelevant; Joseph Stalin famously wondered how many military divisions the pope has; and recently our own government has sought to make Catholic institutions provide services that are contrary to our faith.  And it would be easy to capitulate, to give up, and to simply go along with the culture.  But then we would be betraying the mandate of the owner of the vineyard, and we would risk having the vineyard leased to other tenants who will produce the right fruit.  Will we listen to the parables of the Lord’s vineyard?  Will we, as tenants, listen to the ones the Lord sends us so we know how to tend his vineyard?

"Let your words teach and your actions speak"

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I think we have all been on one side or another of the following situation: a mother or father says to a child, “I need you to take out the trash, dear,” and the child says, “Ok,” and then some time passes, and the trash is not taken out because the child is playing a game, or watching tv, or doing something that he or she considers a little more important (and definitely more enjoyable) than taking out the trash.  That’s basically the same parable that Jesus gives today in the Gospel, and this parable is one to which we easily relate.

Talk, as is said, is cheap.  What really counts is actions.  We all know this.  If we loan someone money, and they keep telling us, “Oh yeah, I’ll get that to you by the end of the week,” but the weeks pass, and there is no reimbursement, we learn not to loan that person money.  Kids can sometimes get in trouble for not doing the chores they say they will but never seem to accomplish.  We can sometimes find out who our true friends are when we are in need and someone does or doesn’t stand by us.  What we say has exponentially more force when we follow it up by what we do.  St. Anthony of Padua said it this way: “Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak.  We are full of words but empty of action, and therefore are cursed by the Lord, since he himself cursed the fig tree when he found no fruit but only leaves.”  People say lots of things, but if they really want to make a difference, then those words need to be followed up by action.  The son in the Gospel who was praised was the one who originally said no, but did what the father wanted.

We have, in our life as Christians, said yes to the Lord on numerous occasions.  The minister of baptism says to parents,

You have asked to have your children baptized.  In doing so you are accepting the responsibility of training them in the practice of the faith.  It will be your duty to bring them up to keep God’s commandments as Christ taught us, by loving God and our neighbor.  Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?

Parents say to God that they will raise their child or children in the faith.  And yet, how many times do we never see those parents again at Mass?  How many times do children, especially as they approach First Holy Communion, not know how to pray, either conversationally with God, or even our simple memorized prayers like the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be?  It is not uncommon, even for parents who send their children to a Catholic School, to think that they no longer have to worry about raising their children in the faith, and yet, my personal experience and so many studies have shown that when the faith is not lived out at home, even if the child attends a Catholic school, that child will abandon the practice of the faith.

Or if we look at another sacrament, the Sacrament of Confirmation.  In that sacrament, we are given more grace and power of the Holy Spirit to share our faith with others, and to live as witnesses to the faith that was, for most, professed for them in baptism.  But out of those who have been confirmed, who said to God that they want to accept the grace of the Holy Spirit, how many show that faith in their words and actions?  How many simply leave the majority of the practice of their faith at the doors of this church, so that their worship of God at Mass has no effect on the choices they make in their daily lives?  And that’s if people even continue to practice their faith after Confirmation.  The old cheesy joke about a pastor with a bat problem comes to mind: a young pastor has bats in the church.  He tries to kill them with a tennis racquet, but no luck; he tries an exterminator, but the bats keep coming back.  So he asks a neighboring, older pastor who previously had bats what to do.  The older pastor says, “I just confirmed my bats, and I never saw them in church again.”

The other temptation for us, as children of God, is to do what we probably all have done as kids.  When it came to our life at home, we have all probably said to ourselves ‘I’ll do my chores later when it’s more convenient.’  We have all also probably said to ourselves, ‘I’ll grow in my faith when I’m older.’  Whether it’s saying a rosary more frequently, saying daily prayers, going to an extra Mass or two during the week, or any other religious practice that we know is good, it can be very easy to say, “I’ll do that when I’m older or retired.”  And certainly sometimes our Mass time is not conducive to working people, since we start at 8:15 a.m.  But, I know we have more retired people in our parish than come to daily Mass.  It’s not a requirement, so I’m not saying you have to come, but how many of you have thought about daily Mass, and maybe even told God you would go more, but then don’t follow through?  It’s very easy for all of us, myself including, whether we’re in school, working, or retired, to promise God that we’re going to grow in our faith, and then not follow through, and so we keep saying that we’ll do it later.  But in reality, we never have later.  The future is never ours to own.  All we ever know is that we have today, and how we can live our faith in the present.

Today the Lord invites us to let our actions speak; to follow what we say by what we do.  May we all take seriously the admonition by St. John in his first letter, “let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.”