"Inconceivable!"

Sixth Sunday of Easter

There are many great movies, but one of the great movies is “The Princess Bride.”  It’s a clean movie, a love story, with an all-star cast including Mandy Patinkin, André the Giant, Peter Falk, and Billy Crystal.  It’s a love story with action, adventure, pirates, international characters, and a little bit of kissing.  It has a cult following, and many people, especially around my age, can quote you lines from the movie like it’s nobody’s business; lines like, “Fezzik, are there rocks ahead?” “If there are, we all be dead.” “No more rhymes now, I mean it.”  “Anybody want a peanut?”; or “Hello.  My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die.”; or one of Billy Crystal’s lines, “It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead.  There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.  Mostly dead is slightly alive.  With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.” “What’s that?” “Go through his clothes and look for loose change.”; and, saving one of the best for last, and the one that will get this homily going again rather than just a reading of quotes from “The Princess Bride”: “Inconceivable!” “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Today we hear a word that we say a lot, but I wonder if we know what it truly means.  That word is “love.”  We heard it a lot in our second reading: 

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God….In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world…In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.

And in our Gospel today we hear about Jesus’ love for us, how He desires us to remain in His love.  And we hear the commandment of the New Testament: “‘love one another as I love you.’”  That’s a lot of love!!  We use the word “love” a lot.  I think we need someone to say to us sometimes: you keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.

We hear all sorts of ideas of what love is: love is a feeling; love is an emotion; love is never having to say you’re sorry; love is never wanting to be with someone else; and the list goes on and on.  There are different types of love, of course.  And maybe some of our confusion comes from the fact that in English we use one word, “love,” to express the way we feel about parents, spouses, friends, sports teams, and food.  Other languages, especially ancient ones, had different words to express the different types of love.  It doesn’t take a philosopher to know that we shouldn’t love our mothers, whom we celebrate today, with the same love we have for pizza.  

We often put love into the context of an emotion or feeling.  But love is truly an act of the will.  We can choose to love or not love.  We may not be able to choose our attractions, but we can choose to love.  When we make love simply an emotion or a feeling, we divorce love from truth, with tragic consequences.  Pope Benedict XVI wrote in Caritas in veritate, “Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity…it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion.  Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality.  Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way.”  Love becomes whatever we want it to be, and can be expressed however we want it to be.  When we try to redefine love without truth, pain comes.  How many TV shows and movies geared towards teens show a young woman who is suffering emotional torment because a young man told her that he loved her, just for a one-night stand.  Once the fling passed, he was free to go away, leaving a wake of sorrow and the death of the soul.

On this Mother’s Day, we give thanks to God that our mothers didn’t treat love as an emotion or devoid from truth.  I’m not a mother.  But I know there were days when my mother was not thrilled with my sisters’ behavior (I was always the perfect child, remember).  I’m sure there were times when she had no warm, fuzzy feelings.  And yet, the truth remained that she was our mother, and that truth carried her through when the feelings were momentarily gone.  Another example of love is when a single mother has to work two jobs just to make ends meet, and has to miss games and concerts and plays so that there’s food on the table, even though she would rather be with her children seeing them succeed.  A mother’s love is meant to show us something of God’s love, since God is the source of motherhood (and fatherhood).  Jesus Himself spoke about His love for Jerusalem in the image of a mother hen.  That love, the love of God, is connected with truth, and is not based upon the whims of culture or feeling.  Love, connected with truth, is doing what is best for the other, even when it is painful.   

Sometimes we have to make sure that we really understand what love is.  We know that Jesus calls us to love one another, but that doesn’t mean that anything goes.  Our mothers know that all too well, and have tried to teach us that.  Our understanding of love should be based on the Word of God, not on a passing culture, so that we can truly love one another as God loves us.  

Love One Another in the Truth

Sixth Sunday of Easter

            How fitting it is that, on Mother’s Day, love is one of the themes of the readings, especially of the second reading and the Gospel.  For many people, if asked to draw a personal representation of love, that representation of love would be a mother.  Mothers, out of love for their unborn children, bear the loving responsibility of protecting the child in the womb.  Mothers are often the ones to express love when a child is injured.  Mothers just seem to exude love.

            And so today, we hear the command of Jesus, repeated by St. John in his first epistle, to love.  In the Gospel, Jesus tells us: “‘This I command you: love one another.’”  And St. John repeats it in the second reading: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God.”  Love is who God is, and love is made incarnate in Jesus, a love which mothers do their best to share with their children.

            St. Augustine is also quoted when it comes to love.  In Homily 7 on the First Epistle of John, St. Augustine writes, “Once for all, then, a short precept is given you: Love, and do what you will.”  In my life, I have heard many people use the phrase: Love, and do what you will.  Sometimes it’s used in a positive way.  Sometimes it’s used to defend any type of action.

            What does it mean to love?  If one of the most basic commandments of Jesus is to love one another, then to fulfill it we have to know what love means.  If we start with today’s Gospel, we see that Jesus explains one of the implications of love.  Jesus says, “‘Remain in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love.’”  Love is rooted in obedience to Jesus and his commandments.  Love is marked by obedience to the One who is Truth.

            Truth is important with love.  Pope Benedict XVI entitled one of his Encyclicals with those two words of truth and love: Caritas in Veritate; Love in Truth.  The Holy Father points out that,

Without truth, charity [love] denigrates into sentimentality.  Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way.  In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love.  It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite.  Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content…

So what does this mean practically?  It sounds nice in a theology paper, but what does it mean for the average person?  Well, Pope Benedict is talking precisely about the abuse of the word love, especially with St. Augustine’s quote, “Love, and do what you will.”  If we do not relate love to the truth that God reveals by reason and by revelation, then it stops being love. 

            We see how love is connected to truth in the response of our mothers, and other family members.  Some would say that love means giving every person what they want; that’s the most loving thing.  But the truth is that not everything we want is good for us.  How many times have children asked their mothers in the check-out line for a piece of candy, and a mother has refused because she knows the child does not need it?  The child may even throw a temper-tantrum to try to get its own way.  But the mother who loves her child knows that she cannot give the child everything it wants, because it will be bad for the child, not only in the present moment, but even in the long run.  Or the mother who grounds her child because he or she stayed out past curfew: is that any less loving?  Of course not!  It helps a child to learn that actions have consequences, and the consequences of disobedience are not fun.  That is certainly a loving act to help the child to grow and mature into the young man or woman that God has called that child to be.

            Most parents recognize how love works in principle.  They understand that what is truly loving is not always what makes their child feel good.  And yet, more and more, parents act like the principle does not apply to their child.  Their child is the exception to the rule.  Of course, eventually everyone’s child is the exception to the rule, so there becomes no rule at all.  Now, I’m not saying that you always have to let the hammer fall.  Often times mothers are great at knowing when a punishment is most loving, and when a child has already gotten the message and needs some leniency.  But more and more our society wants to separate love from truth so that you never have to tell a person “no,” or “you can’t,” or “you shouldn’t.”

            Jesus shows us what love truly is: love is sacrifice for the other.  Love means laying down your own life so that the other can live and thrive.  Jesus laid down his own life to give His people life, even though most of the people, including his disciples, abandoned Him.  He didn’t give them the Messiah they wanted, He gave them the Messiah they needed.  It’s not easy to live that love in the world.  When I walk the halls and I have to correct a child’s behavior, it’s tough to tell them that they might have to come in to school on Saturday because they crossed the line repeatedly or in a major way.  I’d rather not have to correct a child’s behavior.  I’d rather have the kids like me.  But if I truly love them, then I have to help them to know that a person cannot always give in to their desires, that being a man or woman means having self-control, that there are consequences to actions that people have to face, no matter how well intentioned they were.  Thank you, mothers, for your love.  Thank you for your sacrificial love which carried us for 9 months in the womb and continued afterwards.  Thank you for your love in truth.