Resumed Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
**NB: This is an expansion of the homily I gave at the 11 a.m. Ordinary Form Mass**
When it comes to following the Lord, we, too, can complicate things. Which is why it’s nice when either our Lord or St. Paul simplifies things (though the sentences St. Paul uses rarely are simple). At the end of the day, being a Catholic and a disciple of Christ means loving God and loving our neighbor. Nothing more; nothing less. Living up to our call as baptized followers of Christ entails giving God His due, and giving our neighbor his or her due.
So why do we complicate things? Why does the Church have all these teachings and all these rules if living as a disciple comes down to two basic rules? Well, we tend to overcomplicate things, and in our complications, we can fail to see how certain actions detract from the love of God or the love of neighbor. So the Church gives us a guide to help us to know how to live out the great commandment.
To say we complicate things is, ironically, a gross simplification. Our minds, operating under the shadow of sin, fail to comprehend how God calls us to love Him and love those whom He loves, that is, our neighbor. I mean, in our own day, we can’t even understand what love is. We use the word love for different things that are vastly different: I love my family; I love my spouse; I love my friends; I love that car; I love bourbon; I love tropical beaches; I love my dog. We should not be loving all of those people and things in the same way!! But love for a spouse is different than love for a sibling (at least it should be!), though we should love both. And the way we enjoy objects like cars or bourbon or beaches or dogs is altogether a different action than the way we appreciate people. Love, true love, means willing the good of the other when that other can return that love to you. We can’t really love cars, or bourbon, or beaches, or (and I might be stoned for saying this) pets. We can enjoy them, we can delight in them, they can give us pleasure. But we cannot, strictly speaking, love them.
So, we’re already struggling just to say what love is. But now, we take the myriad examples of actions in our life, and we strive to connect it to love of God or love of neighbor. What gets in the way of this is our desire to care for ourself first, to will our own good, rather than that of the other, be he God or neighbor. I might know and express that I love God and should love Him. But then when it’s a beautiful day for golf, or my favorite artist had a concert last night that kept me out really late, or my kid has a game in his or her travel league, suddenly my love of God and knowledge that I should worship Him, especially on Sundays, gets clouded by my own desire to recreate, to rest, to give my kid the opportunity to be a future professional athlete (however unlikely that may be).
Or, to take our epistle, how do we love our neighbor? We can say, academically, perhaps even piously, that we should will the good of our neighbor. But then our neighbor’s tree is dying and branches are falling on my side of the property line. Or my neighbor cuts me off and slams on his breaks, almost causing me to get in a crash. Or my co-worker has really odd habits and I feel I need to discuss it with all the other employees to validate my opinion. Or my neighbor has a yard sign that suggests voting for someone who is, quite obviously, evil. And all the sudden, love of neighbor is a good idea, theoretically, but in the real world we have to take care of ourselves first and make sure our neighbor knows that we are important and he should not mess with us.
I’ve used some pretty simple examples, but even in the complicated matters of life, it all comes down to love of God and love of neighbor. Take in-vitro fertilization, or IVF. Because we in the Church haven’t made it clear, many Catholics don’t see the problem with IVF. After all, aren’t we supposed to be fruitful and multiply, as God commanded in the Garden of Eden? Aren’t we supposed to be open to life? So how is IVF not loving?
The church’s teaching on the sexual act, or anything like it, is based on the fact that God has made marital relations with three requirements to be good: not using another or out of force; unitive; and open to life. IVF includes a break in that meaning of the sexual act. First, it treats a child as a commodity, a good that one can pursue no matter what the cost. Couples seeking IVF will often say that they deserve a child, rather than being open to it as a gift. Also, IVF requires a man to spill his seed, which also involves using oneself to mimic the results of the marital act with another, or using another to achieve arousal. IVF also requires a doctor to impregnate the woman, rather than how a child should be conceived, that is, with her husband in a loving and unitive act where they can give themselves freely to each other, not only in body, but also emotionally and spiritually. Children, the Church says, have a right to be conceived in a loving act between a father and a mother, which also ends up being the best way to love a child and ensure its future success: with a loving mother and a loving father. Further, IVF most often requires multiple fertilizations at the same time, because sometimes one fertilized egg will not take. But that fertilized egg is a new human being, but it’s treated more like an object to be used to achieve an end. If it doesn’t achieve that end, or gets in the way of another end, it is thrown away like garbage. To throw away an innocent human being at one of the most defenseless moments of its life certainly does not demonstrate love of neighbor.
Again, our minds can focus on our own good, and can easily rationalize certain acts, when, at their heart, they do not really demonstrate love of neighbor. So while following Christ comes down simply to loving God and loving our neighbor, we need a guide to help us know whether or not certain acts demonstrate true love. But we don’t just have a guide, we have a mother, Holy Mother Church, who lovingly helps us to know what is good as God has communicated it, so that we can achieve our highest goal, and the result of loving God and loving neighbor in this world: eternal happiness in heaven, where God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.
