Tag: <span>Love</span>

March 2, 2021February 16, 2021

Heavy Yokes, No Help

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The first reading calls us to conversion, to return to the path of justice.

Notice, though, that it doesn’t correct the people of God for missing the small norms listed in the book of Leviticus–ritual washings, minor precepts.

Rather, the conversion to which the Lord calls the people through the prophet Isaiah is a conversion from selfish indifference, to love and charity: “Make justice your aim: redress the wronged, hear the orphan’s plea, defend the widow.”

In today’s gospel, Jesus isn’t correcting the Pharisees for some brand new, novel transgression that they could not have known about from reading the Old Testament. He corrects them for the very same lack of love and charity that we see brought out in Isaiah: “They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.”

How easily we, who have a certain desire to be faithful Christians, get caught up in externals–we want external rules so as to be able to cling to some particular righteousness, so that we can put our hope in that righteousness, and feel secure in it.

It is much harder to place our hope and our security in God’s raw and unconditional love for us, and place our own salvation and righteousness entirely in His hands–so as to pursue a deep relationship with Him and a life poured out recklessly for others.

Let’s unmoor the little craft of our lives from our sense of our own secure compliance and decency, and tie it fast instead to the person of Jesus Christ, seeking to bring Him joy in everything in our life, especially through a tireless and ceaseless focus on the eternal and temporal happiness of others.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Think about the aspect of your Christian life that makes you feel most insecure, maybe even making you obsess over yourself a little. Maybe it is a particular fault, or maybe a temptation. Place that thing with all your heart in Jesus’ hands. Ask Him to free your heart to love Him and others, and to worry over yourself less.

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February 27, 2021February 10, 2021

Rain is for Everyone

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Jesus uses a beautiful comparison when He commands us to love those who are unjust, to love our enemies. He tells us that this will make us children of the Heavenly Father, for “he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

We must love the unjust and do good to them. But how do we do this good? First, we beg that same Heavenly Father, not just to send rain upon them, but also to rain extra grace into their hearts, that they may learn how beautiful that thing is that they are missing–union with God–and strive for it. A choice time to do this is when Christ’s body and blood are raised up in offering for sin to the Father at the consecration at Mass. Pray fervently to the Father at this time. Show Him His Son, and ask that by the infinite power of that Son’s sacrifice, the Father visit the hearts of sinners and convert them. He will do so if we ask, just as He answers the intercessory prayers of Our Lady, who once stood at the foot of that very same sacrifice.

But also, we must do good to those who do not do good themselves, even in little things. We should take pains to make their lives easier, more pleasant, happier in little ways. Jesus does not desire the happiness of the unjust in order that they may be converted, but rather their conversion that they may be happy. He thirsts deeply for the complete fulfillment and happiness of every human person. Even at moments when we cannot give a person that which is most valuable, we must give what we can to bring happiness in little ways–just as the Father shines His sun on the just and the unjust alike.

In the first reading, Moses proclaims great blessings to those who follow the commandments of the Lord, and the psalm says the same. Jesus’ new commandment is the Commandment of Love. Blessed are we when we follow it.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to infuse into your heart the gift of charity, a virtue that cannot be learned but rather must be received from God as a gift. Ask Him to fill your heart with the same passion for others’ happiness that fills His own heart.

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February 7, 2021January 26, 2021

Slaves and Hirelings

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today, the second reading and the gospel appear to give answer to the first reading. In the first reading, Job laments about the drudgery of life. It is interesting that he does not mention any of the dramatic misfortunes that may befall one in life–indeed, that befall Job elsewhere in this book of the Bible. And yet, we can relate to his point of view. We kill ourselves every day, often in monotony, and what do we have to show for it? Like slaves or hirelings, we pitiably crave any wage or respite that we can get.

Jump to the Gospel. We see Jesus in a flurry of activity, responding to the immense demand that has come upon Him for His healing and mercy. Into the lives of the likes of Job, hope and meaning has come. Into the likes of your life, and of mine. For through the prism of omnipotent love, love which we can adopt and spread farther in our own lives, suddenly the drudgery is drudgery no longer; suddenly it all makes sense–glorious sense.

This is why, in the second reading, unlike the hireling described by Job, St. Paul is content to preach the Gospel for free, without any recompense. He is almost jealously protective of the gratuitous nature of his gift of self for the Gospel–because there is only one treasure that he desires, the treasure that is the key to meaning in his life: The omnipotent love, and the opportunity to love, that comes with Jesus Christ.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to make your daily prayer, undoubtedly fraught with innumerable involuntary distractions to the point that it sometimes seems you paid almost no attention at all–ask Him to make your daily contemplative prayer bear the inestimable fruit of love in your life. Ask Him to teach you love, to help you truly to perceive that pearl of great price for which it worth it to sell everything.

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November 16, 2020October 29, 2020

Love is All You Need

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

As we read the first reading, we are feeling pretty good for the seven churches in Asia. They’ve endured and held on, without growing weary. They’ve shown good judgement in flushing out preachers claiming to be apostles who are not authentic.

But then things get a little dramatic. Their lampstands will be snuffed out if they do not repent of failing in the one area that matters: They have lost the love they had at first.

This reminds us of St. Paul’s famous lines: “If I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.”

Love. That’s it. Love for God, love for others. Focus on these two things in our lives. Love for God as hunger for the complete possession of Him, stoked in prayer; and love for neighbor, in the unconditional and ardent desire for the happiness, temporal and eternal, of the persons around us.

The blind man in today’s Gospel passage is a good example of longing. He longs to have his sight restored, and he has hope in Jesus of Nazareth. So when others are telling him to keep silent, he shouts all the louder: “Son of David, have pity on me!”

Jesus healed him because of his faith in Jesus’ power and because of his persistence. How much more will Jesus give us authentic holiness, that is, union with God, if we ask it of Him with the same sort of passion, the same sort of dogged persistence.

In a homily once, St. Augustine said, “Love, and do what you will.” If we understand love properly, these are all the words we need to live by. Conversely, do what you will without love, no matter how noble, and it will not have value.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus how hard it is for you to grasp what it is to love God and love neighbor in its fullness, and even harder to live this love to the extent that you do grasp it. Tell Him with trust and confidence that you know that He is love itself in human form, and ask Him to transform your heart so that it will become full of that love which fills His Heart.

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November 13, 2020October 28, 2020

Separation

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Jesus does this a lot, and it is annoying to our refined worldly sensibilities. He preaches on a separation at the end of time/end of our lives in stark contrast to the amalgamation/non-separation of people here on earth. This amalgamation will persist until the very last day, as in the days of Noah: “They were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark.”

But the annoying part is that the separation is coming, and Jesus just won’t stop talking about it.

Perhaps if we were gods, we would do things differently. Perhaps we would set things up such that things persist just as they are right into eternity. Perhaps we would make it such that, to avoid the radical result of condemnation of many, the few who radically choose Jesus would be deprived of the monumental transformation and exaltation that comes with the reward of the beatific vision in eternity.

But we are not gods. We must trust and obey. And pray and sacrifice ceaselessly for the eternal happiness of our fellow humans, attained through conversion. In the way God has in fact set things up, we may glimpse how worthwhile and different eternal happiness is from happiness, even spiritual happiness, here on earth–that God would sacrifice so much that we may attain it.

In the first reading, St. John reminds us that we don’t need to be particularly clever or invent anything new to make the choice for Christ and follow Him. We need only persevere in fulfilling His Commandment of love (cf. Mt. 22:37-40). “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” (Jn. 15:10)

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Contemplate eternity. Imagine, as best you can, heaven and hell. Drink in the mystery that there is in fact a separation in the end, and some will go to heaven, and others, hell. Be open with Jesus: Ask Him why He set things up this way. And ask Him for the grace to be effective not only in reaching heaven, but especially in assisting others in choosing this path.

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October 30, 2020October 12, 2020

The Mover

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

God is demanding.

The Ten Commandments are not easy. Per the Church’s interpretation of the third Commandment, Honor the Sabbath, we have an obligation to attend Mass every Sunday, lest we fall into serious sin. Also, Jesus tells us that if we call our brother a fool, or look at another person to whom we are not married with sexual desire, we commit serious sin. And St. Paul speaks of the sin of drunkenness. And the list goes on.

But Jesus goes farther than this. He also tells us we must not only avoid sin–but if we fail to look after our brothers and sisters in need, we likewise risk eternal damnation (cf. Mt. 25:31-46).

Because God is demanding, we often think of our Catholic religion as ourselves trying to abide by His demands and please Him. In other words, we think of it in the light of our own effort and initiative.

But God’s demands are just the stage-setter for the Catholic experience–not its essence. Its essence is something very exciting, which makes the demands of God as worthwhile as a difficult drive to our best friend’s wedding is worthwhile because of the celebration that awaits.

The essence of our religion is not our own effort, our own movement, but a movement and action of God, the Mover, in a very real and concrete way.

We see it in the Gospel, when Jesus heals the man with dropsy, defying those who would criticize Him for doing so on the sabbath. In a special way, we see it described in today’s reading from Philippians: “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

The Holy Spirit is the great architect and builder of our experience of the Catholic religion, and healing, along with an exalted union with God, is His intent. A life free from serious sin is the level ground on which He builds, and our prayer time (above all) is His work day. As He “continues to complete it,” an experience of the Kingdom of God grows within us, and we experience it unmistakably and rejoice, even though we “know not how.” (Mk. 4:27)

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Think about the times in your life when you’ve thought of your Catholic religion as a chore, as a set of demands. Then, consider the times when you have been deeply touched by God’s grace. Consider that, as deep as those experiences have been, you have just scratched the surface; consider that the Infinite One has far more in store for you. Talk to Jesus and ask His mercy for the times you haven’t seen past the more difficult demands of your faith, and implore Him to take you to ever more fulfilling experiences of His grace.

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October 25, 2020September 30, 2020

Crazy Love

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s Gospel represents perhaps the most important teaching of Jesus, inasmuch as it sums up all the others. Love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor as yourself. Loving God means seeking union with Him in prayer and the sacraments, and obeying His will like a faithful child; loving neighbor means passionately seeking others’ welfare, even though they are imperfect sinners.

And loving neighbor includes doggedly pursuing the welfare of the least fortunate, those who are suffering want, as the first reading tells us. Too often we Christians forget that looking after the needy is not an optional tack-on to our faith, but rather is a core demand of Him who commands us to love our neighbor as ourself.

These messages of love, very difficult to follow because the require deep faith on the one hand and sacrificial charity on the other, are the same messages that St. Paul tirelessly preached to the gentiles in city after city.

Despite his unconquerable faith and hope, St. Paul must have felt discouragement at times. Was this thing ever really going to take off? For Christianity, so new and vulnerable in the hearts of the communities he founded, to survive when he was gone must have seemed like it would require a massive miracle.

But then we see accounts like that found in today’s second reading, where Paul congratulations the Thessalonians not only for keeping the faith, but ultimately spreading it just as he did, with conviction and passion. Moments like this must have really bolstered Paul’s hope.

Sometimes it feels like we’re the only ones crazy enough to embrace unconditionally Jesus’ message. As such, we feel impotent to pass it on to others. When spreading Christ’s message to others, we have to remember that our words are not the protagonist of conversion, but rather nothing more than a catalyst–the grace of Christ working directly in the human heart is the only protagonist of conversion, salvation, and sanctification.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to make you a catalyst of His redemption. Tell Him you give Him your whole day and your whole life and, even while mindful of your sins, ask Him to take that gift and use it to extend in other souls the same sort of experience of Him and conviction that He has given to you.

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September 16, 2020August 31, 2020

Love and How to Get It

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Jesus and St. Paul both teach us something today about the relative importance even of the things that appear most important in the world, compared to the things that will last and merit all our focus.

If I had the powers of prophecy, I might very well be tempted to think of myself as superior. More so still if I had special gifts of knowledge like, say, St. Thomas Aquinas–or even a great natural scientist.

St. Paul sees the importance of such things as very relative, and possibly of no value at all. They are passing away. They won’t be notable differentiators in Heaven, even if they seem to be today.

Jesus talks about how the tone and content of St. John the Baptist’s preaching and teaching was different from His, due to the particular role of each. Such things are destined to change with time and place. They are not constants.

So, if we are looking for the constant, the thing to focus on, what is it? What is the constant between the Baptist’s teaching and Jesus’? What is the thing that doesn’t change, and that is of absolute importance because it continues into eternity?

St. Paul doesn’t keep us guessing. The constant is love. Love for God: Perfect union with Him. Love for neighbor: Driving passion for the happiness of each person around us in line with our particular vocation.

So how do we love? If (per St. Paul) even a martyr’s sacrifice is of no value if it is made out of pride rather than love, how do we attain love, and leave aside selfishness?

St. Paul describes how love manifests itself, but if we examine his words carefully, he does not give “instructions” for attaining love per se.

Love, or the theological virtue of Charity, is a gift. It is a virtue that is infused into us by God. As such, we cannot obtain it through “practice.” That is maddening! How do we get this gift???

The fact is, there IS something that we can do to grow so full of love that we reach the full potential of the exalted beings that God has created and redeemed us to be.

Love is obtained like a suntan. Sure, no “practice” is useful to get a tan. A suntan is not earthly, It comes from beyond the earth. But it would be foolish to think we can do nothing to get a tan. Lay out in the sun, for goodness sake!

Similarly, to attain love as surely as a suntan, spend time with Love, spend time with God and the sacraments. Exposure to God by these means is a sure way to attain the inestimable virtue of divine love. And if we have that, everything else falls into place.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask His help to make your thirst for Him more constant and consistent so that you dedicate specific time to prayer and the sacraments each day. Ask Him to help your distracted heart focus less and less on the things that are passing, and more and more on Him and neighbor. Ask him for the give of divine love.

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September 10, 2020August 26, 2020

The Engine of Charity

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Sometimes St. Paul’s life presents itself, humanly speaking, as something of a lonely affair. He pours himself out continuously for others, “like a libation” (cf. 2 Tim 4:6), but he is unable to receive much affection in return: He travels too much to set down roots, and he lives in the midst of constant hardship and, ultimately, persecution.

And against this backdrop, consider the delicate sensitivity of his kindness and concern for others as expressed in the first reading. He is willing to forego eating meat because for some, the temptation to believe in idols is still very strong, and meat is the stuff of sacrifice to those idols.

His words clearly emphasize how important it is to consider the subjective situation of souls, even souls in error, when evangelizing. There are some in the Church that really believe that, if we are to be faithful, we must preach the bare, unvarnished truth in all its harshness without concern for others’ state, and let anyone who can’t take it “suck it up.” We sometimes forget that the reason Jesus Christ descended to earth and became man, and dragged a cross up a hill dripping in blood, was not to defend the unvarnished truth–but to make it accessible to people once again. And we forget how delicately and mercifully He has treated us in our own sin and error, and coaxed us toward the truth in a way respectful of our freedom and limitations.

Back to St. Paul. How did he keep giving so passionately, so selflessly, with such great sensitivity, in the midst of the physical and emotional harshness he endured every day? The answer lies in the Gospel.

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus talks about extremes of charity (that is, selfless love of others) of the sort that St. Paul would come to embody. And He reveals at the end of the passage how such a lifestyle is sustainable. When you give yourself 100% to God, without holding anything back, and recklessly dedicate your whole life in His honor to the love and care of others, “gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.”

His intimate, personal love for us is that “good measure.” It is real. In a life that includes even a short period of daily contemplative prayer and frequent reception of the sacraments, that love is something we can experience right here on earth. It is something as powerful as it is subtle. It is so powerful that it is the only sustenance we need in a rugged life entirely given over to passionate striving for the welfare of others.

The life of reckless charity powered by Jesus’ personal, intimate love for us could not be more distantly removed from the pitiful life of those who set no boundaries and exhaust their lives “in service of others” motivated by the hopeless longing for some crumb of kindness, some word of recognition, from the ungrateful people they serve, who only disdain them in their emotional neediness.

Reckless charity like that of St. Paul is given from a position of strength that comes from the most fulfilling and intimate relationship of love with the only One who can never disappoint.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you persevere in prayer and grant you in His time the full experience of an intimate relationship with Him, which involves purification and crosses, but also the greatest of joy. Ask Him to be the engine that powers in you a life completely given over to charity, that is, to passionate effort for the welfare of those around you.

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September 4, 2020August 23, 2020

I Don’t Know My Judgement, but I Do Know My Judge

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s readings are overflowing with abandonment to the loving sovereignty of God.

In the first reading, St. Paul takes nothing for granted. He does not consider himself acquitted–for he has yet to undergo the judgement of God. But we do not find him afraid, either. He certainly is afraid of no human tribunal. We find this borne out amply in his life; as promised, the Holy Spirit inspires in him what to say before the courts of men (cf. Lk. 12:12, Acts 23), and in the end, Paul goes to his martyrdom without fear.

But Paul, while considering himself not acquitted, also does not fear the judgement of God. He calmly and serenely submits to the fact that God will judge him. That he does not fear that judgement, even though he knows not the outcome beforehand, teaches us a great lesson.

Elsewhere, Paul tells us, “I know him in whom I have believed.” (2 Tim. 1:12) This is the key to the apparent paradox whereby Paul knows not the outcome of his own eventual judgement, and yet is not afraid. He knows Christ’s love for him so intimately, and leans on that love so completely, that “outcomes” are secondary to him. Judgement is not his main concern. His main concern is the love of Jesus Christ, for his life “is hidden with Christ in God.” (cf. Col.. 3:3)

The interesting thing is that Paul is not utterly “selfless” in this regard, that is, devoid of a healthy concern for his own welfare. Rather, what he ultimately relies on for his own welfare and happiness is not how virtuous he will be seen to be, but rather the love of Christ that he has experienced.

How beautifully his sentiment is echoed by today’s psalm: “The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.”

In the Gospel today, we find different times and circumstances calling for different behavior. When the bridegroom is present, no fasting occurs; when not, then comes the fast. We are not to remedy problems of today with the solutions tailored to yesterday. For those who treat Christianity as a rule book, this “inconsistency” can prove befuddling. Indeed, as times change and solutions evolve, those seeking absolute consistency in all things within Christianity can even come to despair of it.

Not so, those who adopt St. Paul’s attitude. Because the beauty of Christianity, the thing that intoxicates us, the pearl of great price for which we gladly sell everything else that we have, is the love of Christ. And when we understand that, we allow the personification of that Love–the Holy Spirit–to guide us day by day, through every changing time and circumstance, adjusting solutions on the fly. We have experienced the love of Christ, we have experienced the Holy Spirit, and we know that, even though “thousands fall around us” (cf. Ps. 91:7), He will not let us down.

Because we know Him in whom we have believed.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you to be faithful to your daily prayer commitment. Ask Him to build the relationship with Him that you long to have: A relationship of complete and total intimacy and trust, whereby your confidence in the Holy Spirit in your life is unfailing, solid as a rock. Ask Him to inundate you, until nothing–not even the outcome of your eternal judgement–is as important to you as leaning on His love.

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