Ordo Amoris

Quinquagesima
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I try to communicate accurately as much as I can, though I do sometimes err.  As a third order Dominican, the truth occupies a special place in my life and in my interactions with others.  When I make decisions, I try to have all relevant information that I can, to help me arrive at the right decision for a particular circumstance.  The more accurate information I have, the better decisions I can make, whether for the immediate present moment or even for the future.
    But truth, while greatly important, should not occupy the highest priority in our life.  St. Paul tells us that love, or charity (that type of love that reflects the love of God) is what is most important.  God could have given you special charisms, like speaking in tongues or prophecy.  You could know everything.  Your faith could be so strong that you, as our Lord said, move mountains or trees.  You could be the most generous person alive, giving away all that you have to the poor.  You could even offer up your body.  But if you do not love, all of that counts for nothing.
    What a good gut check!  How easy we can find it to do the right things.  We check off the lists of the precepts the Church asks us to follow: we go to Mass; we give money to support the parish; we pray daily; we abstain from meat on Fridays or do some other penance.  But even if we do all those things, if we do them without love, there is no merit for us.  All our daily deeds are like dehydrated food.  They have what they need to sustain us, but we need the water of love to rehydrate the food and make it edible once more.
    What many Catholics struggle with today is understanding what love is.  So many people, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, do not understand love.  They reduce love to an emotion or a desire.  They make non-sensical statements like “love is love.”  Or they react like children who want candy from the check-out line and say that if we really loved them, we would let them do whatever they wanted.  But that’s not how St. Paul describes love.  Love doesn’t seek after itself.  If I do not display patience with another, I’m not loving that person.  If I’m only looking out for myself, I’m not loving.  If my desires are perverse and contrary to nature, I do not desire love.

    Recently, our Vice President mentioned a teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas: the ordo amoris or order of love.  He referenced it in regards to the ongoing immigration debate.  I’m going to side-step the immigration debate, and simply focus on the ordo amoris, which will hopefully help you decide how best to implement what is most loving.  If you want the actual and full treatment from St. Thomas Aquinas, you can go to the Summa Theologiae, the Second Part of the Second Part, Question 26.
    The general order of love is: God, self, neighbor.  We then further delineate neighbor into family, city, country, and world.  We should love God above all else.  We owe everything to God as our Creator, and the first commandment our Lord gives us is to love God with all of who we are (and He cites the Book of Deuteronomy).  The second law is that we should love our neighbor as ourself.  But to love our neighbor as ourself, we have to love ourself first.  Love of self can be sacrificed for a higher good, the love of God, as we see in martyrs, or in parents for their children, but we need to have a proper love of self.  Lastly, we love others after God and self, based upon how close they are to us.  Generally speaking, the closest to us are family members, then members of our community, then other people.
    If we follow this to its natural conclusion, it makes perfect sense.  If I didn’t believe that there are priorities in love, then I might skip Mass on Sundays to spend time with a friend playing basketball or drinking bourbon.  Or if I don’t have a hierarchy of loves, then when I give money to charitable contributions, I should give the same amount of money I spend on groceries each week to each of the following: my parish; my Diocese; my local food pantry; the homeless shelter; each religious order that exists; each food pantry that exists in the US; each homeless shelter that exists in the US; every orphanage around the world; every charity around the world; etc.  Of course, that would lead to poverty, and the family would lack necessary goods, to which they have a right, while others, who are not even known to us, would receive the same financial support.  

    The Holy Father rightly brings up the parable of the Good Samaritan as our Lord reminds us to care for our neighbors who are not like us.  The Samaritan had no family or even national connection to the man left for dead.  But the man on the brink of death was close to him, and the Samaritan could do something at that moment to help the man, without neglecting any of his other legitimate responsibilities.  The man was in immediate need of assistance, and so, even in the ordo amoris, the Samaritan, like the priest and the levite before him who failed, had a duty to assist as a way of expressing love.
    The Scriptures also challenge us to remember that love of God cannot fully be divorced from love of neighbor.  St. John writes in his first epistle: “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  Love of God, strictly speaking, does outweigh love of neighbor.  I should be more concerned with what God thinks of me than what my friends or family think of me.  However, more often than not, we show God we love Him by loving the people He loves, that is, our neighbor.
    The argument of modern society is that we should love everyone equally.  To the extent that we generally will good for all people, that is true.  But we cannot, strictly speaking, actually love every single person on this planet equally, because we have closer ties with some than with others, and the resources by which we show our love are limited, even while love is not limited.  So we should order our loves, putting God above all else, then myself next, then my neighbor, and my neighbor starting with my family, then my friends, then my other communities both locally and internationally.  I also have to order my love so that I deal with what is in front of my face: the rich man had a duty to care for poor Lazarus because Lazarus was at his doorstep and needed the rich man’s help.  
    But we also have to understand what love is and what love is not.  Love is not just a feeling, or license to do whatever we or another want to do.  Love means willing the good, for ourselves and for others.  If we allow a person to do that which is harmful, or if we want to do something which is harmful, we are not loving.  
    We could do so many good things, or have so many spiritual gifts.  But love, willing the good of the other, has to undergird all of what we do.  Otherwise all of our good deeds and actions are worth nothing.  If we ever have a question about how love looks, then gaze at the crucifix.  Because that is the greatest example of love: to lay down one’s life for God and for neighbor.  If our actions connect us to the cross of Christ, then there is good chance that they are truly loving actions, and therefore join us to the God who is Love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Simply Complicated

Resumed Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

**NB: This is an expansion of the homily I gave at the 11 a.m. Ordinary Form Mass**

  

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  During my combined 13 years of post-high school education, I wrote a lot of papers on a lot of topics.  But the one thing that unified everything–from English and political science classes in undergrad, to theological papers in Major Seminary, to liturgical papers in my second Master’s degree after ordination–was that I tended to make things more complicated than they needed to be.  Apparently, St. Paul and I have the same writing style, where we like to cram a lot of ideas into one sentence, with various subordinate clauses and ideas.  
    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.

Rules or Relationship?

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Some people view Catholicism as a set of rules, or maybe even a particular type of morality or ethics.  They hear the Church rightly say that one ought to do this, or ought not to do that.  They sense, whether from reality or from caricatures in popular culture, that being Catholic is all about going to Mass each Sunday, going to confession, saying the rosary, listening to the pope, not eating meat on Fridays, getting married in a church, not having sex outside of marriage, not contracepting, etc.  And those are all aspects of the way that a Catholic, every Catholic, should be living his or her life. 

    But, as Pope Benedict XVI said, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”  And the encounter that Pope Benedict mentions is not just a meeting, but really a falling in love.  That is why Jesus teaches us today in the Gospel that the greatest commandment is the two-fold love of God and love of neighbor.
    When we love someone, we love not only that person, but the things that he or she loves.  When we truly love someone, our affections change to better match that person’s.  Our life becomes not about us, but about the other.  We see this start to bloom even in adolescence when a boy starts to care more about the things that his crush likes.  I think I have mentioned this before, but that’s how I started listening to country music: a girl I liked listened to country, and I wanted to have something to talk to her about.  But the love of the other fully blossoms in marriage, where one’s life is not one’s own, but is inseparably joined to the other, intertwined at the deepest levels, and the importance of the other eclipses the importance of the self and one’s own desires. 
    God desires that we each have an encounter of love with Him.  God desires not that we simply know about Him (even the demons can do that), but that we love Him, that we give our heart to Him, that He becomes more important to us than we are to ourselves, and that the things He loves become the things we love, which are really what will make us happy, since God, as our Creator, knows exactly what will fulfill our human nature. 
    “‘The whole law and the prophets,’” says Jesus, “‘depend on these two commandments.’”  The phrase, “the whole law and the prophets” means the entirety of Scripture.  All of what God has revealed depend on love of Him and love of neighbor.  Every genuinely Catholic practice–every law, every precept, every commandment–needs to find its base in this two-fold commandment of love, or else it is built on sand.
    This may not always seem obvious.  What, we might ask, does giving up fish on Fridays have to do with love of God or love of neighbor?  Is it because I’m supporting the fish industry, and those who work in it are my neighbor?  Not entirely, though I suppose it is love of neighbor in that sense.  But much more deeply, God has revealed to us that our desires are not always in accord with His will or with the truth.  We want things we shouldn’t.  And in order to help train our wills and our bodies not to go astray, God tells us that we should give up good things to focus on that which is even better: not fish in se, but on growing closer to God through restraining our human desires, even the good ones, so that we can more easily say no to the desires that take us away from God. 
    Or consider going to Mass every Sunday and Holyday.  Can’t I love go through a screen on the TV or the computer?  Can’t I offer worship to God from my couch?  In a word, no; not in the same way.  Is FaceTiming your spouse the same as sitting with her at the table, holding her hand, smelling her perfume, seeing the radiance of her smile in person?  And God not only gives us His presence.  He enters into us through the Eucharist so that we are even physically united to Him.  You cannot have that watching the Mass on TV or via Live Stream.  Each time we stand, or sit, or kneel it is like we are dancing with God, our bodies moving this way and that based upon how the sacred liturgy is progressing.  And our encounter with God culminates in Christ giving Himself to us, giving us today the same sacrifice of some 2,000 years ago on the cross, though doing it not in an unbloody way.  True love of God wouldn’t want to miss out on that for the world.
    Love of neighbor follows from our love of God, because when we love someone we love the ones they love, and God loves all of His children, even the difficult ones.  As we grow in our love with God, we cannot help but love our neighbor.  And if we are not growing in love of neighbor, then it’s a good chance that we’re not really growing in our love of God.  It is as St. John says in his first epistle: “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  Any authentic growth in holiness means that we are growing in love of our neighbor.
    Yes, Catholicism has a lot of things that we do or don’t do.  Yes, it has its own morality.  But it’s not just dos and don’ts.  It’s not just a moral system.  Catholicism is a love story between the individual and God, and therefore also between the individual and God and those whom God loves.  If you name a teaching or a moral precept of Catholicism, it will find its way back to love of God and love of neighbor.  “‘The whole law and the prophets,’” and the whole exercise of our faith, “‘depend on these two commandments.’” 

The Gift of Adoption

 Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
    I enjoy giving gifts.  I try really hard to give good gifts, but I don’t always succeed in finding gifts that others truly want.  But there’s something about giving people something that makes me happy, especially for my close friends and family.  Sometimes people will say, “You shouldn’t have!” as a way of expressing their thanks for the gift.  Other times, they’re not the biggest fan of the gift, and mean, “You really shouldn’t have gotten me a gift!”  
    While I like providing for people, especially things that they really want but wouldn’t get for themselves, even things that they need, there’s always the danger that, in giving a gift, it’s really a quid pro quo, a this for that.  I know that sometimes friends have wondered if I get them gifts as a way to try to bribe them to stay my friends, as if giving the gift would earn their friendship.
    I thought about this when reading over the second reading from the epistle of St. John.  John writes, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.  And so we are.”  God has given us a great gift: to be called and truly to be His children, sons and daughters in the Son of God.  That is a gift that we truly need, even if sometimes we don’t recognize that we need it.  But it is a gift; it cannot be earned.
    Still, sometimes I, and perhaps you, as well, try to earn that gift.  We think that if we just did enough good things, or avoided particular sins, or lived in this heroic way, that God would be happy with us and would make us His children based upon the gifts that we have given Him.  As Catholics, it’s very easy to fall into this trap that God only loves us if we do what He wants, that our adoption as His children is somehow based upon what we do.  
    But that is a lie that the enemy tells us, a lie which distracts us from the true love of the Father.  That love of the Father is not based upon what we do, but is based upon the fact that we are His creation, and His creation has been raised to a new dignity, not based upon what we have done, but what Christ has done for us.  In baptism, we become little christs, little anointed ones, and God sees the imprint of His Son, Jesus, in us.  That has nothing to do with how holy we are, because, at the time just before we are baptized, we are not holy; we are at enmity with God.  It has everything to do with God being Love, and the love that God has for His Son, and all those who are joined to His Son through baptism.  
    How much do we try to earn the love of the Father through trying to be perfect, and then get frustrated when it doesn’t work out, when we’re not perfect, or even as holy as we desire to be!  But it’s putting the cart in front of the horse.  Living the commandments is only possible through the love that we receive from the Father.  Keeping the commandments is important; our life is supposed to reflect the love of the Father that has been poured into our hearts.  But is the result, not the pre-requisite, of the love of God.

    And as we celebrate the Holy Family, and try to be holy families ourselves, we are called to model that same love and that same approach to love with our families that we have with our heavenly Father.  We love the members of our family, not because of something they have done for us, but simply because they are ours.  We hope that they live a good life, and we try to support each other in being holy, in following the commandments to love God and neighbor as Christ and the Church teaches us.  We want them to be good representatives of our name and our family.  But that comes as a result of our love for them, not as the pre-requisite of our love for them.  
    We see this especially with babies.  Babies don’t really do anything for the family; they pretty much just take from the family.  They cry whenever they need something; they demand food whenever they want it; they poop and spit-up on a regular basis; they never seem to sleep when you want (or need) them to.  And yet, how much love is showered upon babies, even before they’re born!  You can’t help but love a baby.  And that is how much God loves us, and infinitely more!  
    We are, no matter how old we are, the babies of the Holy Family.  God the Father loves us infinitely, even though we cry a lot, and demand a lot, and often soil our souls on a regular basis.  We really do nothing for God in the grand scheme of things.  But God the Father loves us.  And because we are loved by God the Father, we are also loved by God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  And because Mary is the Mother of God, she loves what He loves, and so she loves us with her motherly love.  And because St. Joseph cares for Mary and her child, Jesus, he also cares for us, who are her children, too, given to Mary at the foot of the cross by Jesus.  Again, it is not based upon what we can do for Mary and Joseph, and even more so is not based upon what we can do for the Holy Trinity.  But the love is there, and is given freely as a gift.
    “Beloved: See what love the Father has bestowed upon us that we may be called the children of God.”  Not because of what we give God.  Not because we could ever earn His love.  Simply because, in Christ, as a gift freely given, we are adopted sons and daughters of God.  “And so we are.”

Simple, and Yet Complicated

 Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

    So simple, and yet so complicated.  Love God and love your neighbor.  It’s as easy and as difficult as that.  And even simply understanding the two great commandments is key to being on the right path to heaven, as Jesus tells the scribe in the Gospel today.  But, while it’s easy to say that all we have to do is love God and love our neighbor, it does require some unpacking.
    First of all, we need to understand what love is.  Modern culture is less than helpful when it comes to defining love.  We are told: love is never having to say you’re sorry; love is a feeling or an emotion; what is love? Baby don’t hurt me; love is love; to quote a somewhat contemporary movie: “Love is like oxygen.  Love is a many-splendored thing.  Love lifts us up where we belong.  All you need is love.”  
    Love, though, from a Catholic point of view, and I’m stealing here from Bishop Barron, is willing the good of the other.  Love is an action that pursues the true happiness of the other.  To quote St. Paul (a bit more solid than a secular definition), “Love is patient, love is kind.  It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury.”  Love means working for the good of the other, even when it means the denial of personal goods.  And if we want an image of love, we need look no further than Jesus on the crucifix, which is love made incarnate.  Jesus acted for our good, even when it meant His own death, just so that we could enter heaven and have eternal happiness.  That is certainly willing the good of the other, acting for the good of the other.
    So how do we love?  St. Augustine says, “Love, and do what you will.”  Does this mean that we can do anything as long as we feel like it’s good for the other?  No, and Augustine would not agree with that.  If God is love, as the Scriptures say in St. John’s first epistle, then there is a measure of what love does, which cannot contradict the nature of love.  I cannot say that I am loving God or neighbor if it involves breaking a commandment.  I cannot say that I am loving God or neighbor if my actions go against something we are taught as a matter of faith or morals in the Bible or authoritatively by the Church.  If God is love, and Jesus is God, and the Church is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, then when the Church teaches something with authority (as a matter of faith and morals), we are learning what love is, and how to love (and sometimes what love is not, and how not to love).  
    So how do we know if we’re loving God and loving our neighbor?  Do we will the good that God desires?  Do we will the true good of our neighbor, not just acting in a way that makes our neighbor feel good?  Sometimes homilies can be a bit broad and vague, so let’s break it down a little further.
    If you skip Mass out of laziness or prioritize something else (e.g., sports) as more important than worshiping God, you are not loving God fully.  You may love God in other ways, but you are not loving God in that way.  If you reject one of the dogmatic teachings of the Church, or think that the Church cannot tell you what to do in a particular area of your life, like the bedroom, then you are not loving God fully.  You may love God by giving your obedience of faith and morals in other areas, but you are missing out on loving God as God wants to be loved.  
    If you give someone the bird while driving, you are not loving your neighbor fully.  If you gossip about your fellow employee who gets on everyone’s nerves, you are not loving your neighbor fully.  If you see you neighbor falling into sin and do not correct him or her in a charitable and prudent way, you are not loving your neighbor fully.  If you have sex before marriage or live with your girlfriend or boyfriend, or even fiancé before marriage, you are not loving your neighbor fully.  In all those ways, and many more, you are not willing the good of the other.  It may feel good; it may feel very good.  But it is not, in the end, the actual good of the other.
    Family life is a great analogy for understanding love.  You cannot say you fully love your spouse if you hold back in an area of your life from him or her, or do something that you know upsets your spouse.  You may love in other ways, but you are not fully willing your spouse’s good.  Or if you let your children do whatever they want, like eating ice cream every day for dinner, or never making children go to school or help clean the house, you are not fully loving your children.  You may love them in other ways, but you are not fully willing their good, since the good of the other often includes not following every desire that we have.  Love–willing the good of the other–does not always feel good, but it is always directed toward what is truly good.  
    Sometimes we struggle at knowing what is truly good, and that is what makes loving God and our neighbor so difficult.  We can easily confuse what is good and what is delightful.  The best guide for knowing what is truly good is God, and God has spoken to us to help us know the good through the Scriptures and through the Church.  If you’re ever wondering if you are willing the good of God or your neighbor, look towards the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Those two books will help you to know if you are being truly loving, and if you are “not far from the kingdom of God.”

The Gospel according to "Saved by the Bell"?

Kelly Kapowski & Zack Morris

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Last weekend, Deacon Dave gave a great homily on our call to take care of what God has given us, especially human life in all its stages.  A lot of times, when we think about caring for human life, we think of our opposition to abortion, or of caring for mothers who are carrying a child in their womb, or of making sure that the elderly are not euthanized.  But, Deacon Dave last week reminded us, and our readings today also remind us, of another aspect of caring for our fellow brothers and sisters: our care for the poor and marginalized.
    It’s ironic, because last Saturday morning I was watching “Saved by the Bell,” which was a favorite TV show of mine in middle and high school.  I am a little ashamed to admit that, when I was in middle school I hoped my high school experience at Lansing Catholic would be like that at Bayside High.  I am not as ashamed to admit that I also liked watching “Saved by the Bell” because I had a crush on Kelly Kapowski, one of the lead female characters.  In any case, last Saturday’s episodes that I saw were a two-part Christmas episode where Zack Morris, the leading male character, meets an attractive young woman working at the mall, and he wants to date her, and then meets a homeless man in the mall bathroom.  It turns out the man and the young woman are father and daughter.  Zack is alerted to some of his stereotypes regarding homeless people, and does his best to help this family and give them a merry Christmas.  It was a good lead-up to today’s Gospel and first reading.
    Jesus in the Gospel today reminds us that, not only are we to love God, but we are also to love our neighbor.  And the Lord tells the Chosen People through Moses that loving their neighbor means not mistreating aliens (a word that is not popular today but just means “a person from another place”); taking care of widows and orphans (who, in that day, did not have social security or welfare to sustain them; they were totally reliant on the community for their survival); and caring in general for the poor.  We, as followers of Jesus, are held to this same standard, and are called as part of our care for human life, to do our best to care for the poor and marginalized.
    In the “Saved by the Bell” episode, the producers did a great job of pointing out that the homeless are not homogenous in their circumstances.  The father in the episode had been a computer programmer, and had been laid off by his company.  He tried to find work, even traveling to a different State, but couldn’t get a job.  I think often times we say, “the poor,” and consider them all the same.  But there are different types of poverty, even within the category of financial poverty.
    Caring for the poor can be difficult, because I believe that all of us want to help the poor, but we may not know how, and we may wonder about the person’s particular circumstances.  Or maybe we feel that it’s the government’s place to care for the needs of all the poor, so that the poor will leave us alone.  But we need to encounter the poor so that we can recall that they are human, created in the image and likeness of God, just as we are.
    Still, there are different needs.  One person can be poor because he has a disability that does not allow him to work.  Another person can be poor because she lost her job and doesn’t have any savings to get her through unemployment.  Another person can be poor because medical bills for an unexpected illness or injury depleted almost all financial resources.  Or a person could be poor because they don’t want to work and would rather collect money from government programs.  There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, which can seem frustrating or daunting.  And yet, we are still called to assist the poor.
    There are also structures that can sometimes encourage people to be poor, or rely on the government for their existence.  There are people who want to work, but if they work, they won’t qualify for welfare, and the money they would earn in a job is less than they would get from welfare.  Work is part of our responsibility as citizens, to use our gifts and talents for the building up of society, and contributes to assistance like social security and Medicare, but it also reminds the person of his or her dignity.  It’s surprising to me that people with better financial and economic minds than mine don’t come up with a system where, if a person earned less from working at a job, the difference between solely being on welfare and the paycheck could be made up by welfare, thus taking care of people and helping people find the dignity of work, which, St. Paul says, we need to do if we are able.
    But, as I mentioned earlier, caring for the poor cannot be pawned off on the government.  It was Ebenezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” who complained that he paid taxes to care for the poor, so that should be enough.  We are called, to the extent that we’re able, to assist the poor personally, even if that means donating time instead of treasure (and I know the North End Soup Kitchen and Catholic Charities can use some volunteers).  Sometimes volunteering is the best way to help when we don’t know if the person begging at the top of the exit ramp truly needs the help (which I believe some do) or are trying to prey on people’s sympathies, though they could work rather than beg.
    But no matter how we do it, God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–invites us today to truly see the poor, not as a homogenous group of people, but as individuals, created in the image and likeness of God.  And as we look upon their suffering, to do what we can, even if just the smallest little bit, to show them the love of God by assisting them.  In that way, too, we can be part of a culture that respects all life, from natural conception to natural death.

What Question Do We Ask God?

Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

            This past Monday, Bishop Mengeling gave a wonderful talk on the Year of Faith and his time at the Second Vatican Council.  He had some amazing slides from both outside and inside St. Peter’s during some of the sessions.  Before the talk, a few members of the pastoral staff and members of the adult formation team had dinner with Bishop Mengeling and I.  At one point of the conversation, Bishop Mengeling mentioned the questions he would have for God when he died, and some of the others mentioned their own questions to God that they are saving up for when they meet their Maker.

            In today’s Gospel, a scribe asked Jesus a question.  Now, recall that the scribes and Jesus didn’t always get along.  The scribes, along with the Pharisees and Sadducees, were always trying to trap Jesus, to get Him to say something so they could write Jesus off as neither a prophet nor sent by God.  At the first hearing of the question, maybe we think it’s another trap being set: “‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’”  Maybe, we could think, this scribe was trying to trick Jesus into giving a wrong answer. 

            Jesus responds with the Shema, the text we heard from our first reading, which forms the heart of the Jewish faith, and was to be said by Jews each day: “Hear, O Israel!  The Lord our God is Lord alone!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  He then adds a second commandment, from the Book of Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  The scribe then agrees with Jesus.  But rather than Jesus condemning the scribe for trying to trap Him, as Jesus did with so many others, Jesus says, “‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’”  This is a different type of question; one asked not so much to trap, as to truly find out the truth.

            What question would we ask Jesus?  What question do we ask Jesus?  Maybe there’s lots of little trivia that we want to know: did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?  What does Jesus really look like in His human body?  How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?  But this scribe, who was basically congratulated for his question, asked about salvation.  The question of ‘what is the greatest commandment?’ is basically a question about what the most important thing is to know and do.  And Jesus answers that question.

            Especially in an academic community like East Lansing, we can have lots of questions for God.  Sometimes they are questions about trivia.  Sometimes they are weightier questions about life and death, why suffering exists.  Those are not bad questions.  But there’s a hierarchy of truths, and the first one on our mind should be ‘how do I get to spend eternity with God?’  If God made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him, to paraphrase St. Augustine, then the first question on our minds should be how we come to rest in God?  To answer that, we turn back to the scribe’s question.

            Jesus answers that the first commandment is about knowing and doing.  We must know who God is.  Only in the measure that we know God can we love God.  If we know God well, we can love Him more.  If we know God poorly, we won’t love God as much as we need to or want to.  Jesus starts out with the unity of God; God is one.  And yet, God is love, and love is self-diffusive; it gives out.  So our one God is also a communion of Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And God sent His Son, Jesus, to reveal to us in a human body just how far that love goes.  That’s what we see on the cross: God’s love.  Then God sends the Holy Spirit to those who have gotten to know Jesus in order to continue the work of Jesus after He ascended into heaven.  That’s the Church.  The Holy Spirit continues the work of Jesus by continuing to teach the truth (the teaching office of the Church) and by sharing God’s love with those who want it and who have faith in God (that’s the sacramental life of the Church, where God’s love which is grace, is poured into our hearts by the 7 Sacraments and by our connecting to Jesus through prayer).  Just like in the New Testament, some continue to receive the truth and love that God reveals (especially those who recognize their need for God, that is, sinners), and there are some who continue to reject the truth and love that God reveals (especially those who think that they have all the answers themselves, and who don’t need anyone). 

            But besides just knowing who God is, Jesus also reminds us that we are called to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; in other words, with all of who we are.  Jesus calls us not just to know, but to act and respond to that love.  And if we are called through Baptism to be members of Christ’s Body, the Church, then our mission is the same as Jesus’ mission: to reveal the truth and the love of God.  We are also called, in loving God with our entire self, to preach the truth to others by our words and to give them the love of God through our actions.  Some may reject the light of truth and choose to remain in the darkness of their own opinions.  Some may even reject God’s love because it makes demands on their life and calls for conversion.  But, as Jesus Himself said, “‘If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.  If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.’”

            In this Year of Faith, let us continually seek to rest in God by taking practical ways to get to know God better—through prayer, study, and silence—and by taking practical ways to love God better—through prayer, giving of our time and talent, and supporting one another—so that, at the end of our lives, we can say when Jesus questions us, that we have tried our best to know the God who is One, and to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.