13th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Scripture
tells us that we live and move and have our being in God. Scripture
also tells us that God is love. It follows then that we live and move
and have our being in love, Divine Love. What this means practically
is that our very existence – that
we ARE at all – is
a loving act of God. So, any person, place, thing, or activity that
we say we love, we are able to love only b/c God loved us first. This
is the point Jesus is making when he surprises us by saying, “Whoever
loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever
loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” This
surprising bit of apparent egoism from Jesus reveals a larger, more
fundamental truth about who we are as creatures and what we are
capable of. Because we are made in love and made to love, but are
also fallen and often disordered in who and what we love, we can make
idols of things; we can love other created things as if they were the
sources of Divine Love. Therefore, we are not worthy of Christ; we do
not take up our crosses; we fail to receive him when we choose to
love things before we first love God. To get our lives properly
re-ordered toward our eternal end, we must first love God, and Him
above all.
When
we love God first and above all else, all of our other loves make
perfect sense. You love your parents, your spouse, your children. You
love your neighbors, your co-workers, even strangers. You love your
hobbies; you love your job – maybe? If these loves are properly
ordered – that is second to and below your love for God – then
loving these things become your way of loving God. Loving the things
of this world in order to love God is how we avoid loving God in the
abstract. Very few things are more damaging to your spiritual life
than “loving God” in theory and then hating your neighbor in
practice. In fact, hating your neighbor in practice IS hating God. In
theory and in practice. We cannot get away from the necessity of
willing the Good for all of God's children. Even trying to do so is
spiritually damaging. How? Because you and I were created in God's
love and re-created in Christ's sacrificial love, so trying to figure
out a way to love God while hating our neighbor is just another
version of hating ourselves. . .and God. That path does not lead to
the Narrow Gate.
The
path leading to the Narrow Gate is straight and flat. Jesus says,
“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life
for my sake will find it.” How do you lose your life? And how do
you lose it for the sake of Christ? You lose your life in baptism.
You left the Old Man behind in the baptismal waters. Christ
re-created you, a New Man, a New Woman, and you are now not only
freed from sin and death but you are also gifted with the freedom to
never sin again. In other words, you are free to love perfectly as
Christ loves you. And that's how you lose your life for the sake of
Christ. Loving perfectly. Loving in the proper order: God first,
above all; then your brothers and sisters in Christ (“the little
ones”) and then the things of this world. And here's where our
dreaded crosses come into play. By loving the things of this world in
light of God's love, we set ourselves apart. We set ourselves against
the world b/c the people and things of this world want to be loved on
their terms, by their own rules. And this makes us objects of scorn
and abuse. On their terms and by their rules, love often means
accepting sin; approving disobedience; and celebrating disordered
passions. This we cannot do and live in properly ordered love. And
b/c we cannot love as they want us to, we are called haters, bigots,
much, much worse.
That's
a cross we must bear. The temptation, of course, is to just surrender
to the mob and love them as they want to be loved. But that makes us
partners in their sin. Worse, it makes us traitors to Christ and the
life he won for us by his death. Our witness to the world must come
from our individual and corporate participation in Divine Love –
not from race, class, gender identity, political party, sexual
orientation, or any other ideological label that the worldly spirits
use to divide us. It is no easy task to endure genuine rage and acts
of violence when we stand with Christ and his re-creating love. But
that is what we are called to. That is what we have vowed to do. We
have upon us the prophet's task of standing firm in God's love and
showing the spirits of this world that there is nothing mightier
available to us that the saving mercy of our Father's love. He sets
free. He saves. He makes right. And He gives life eternal. Properly
ordered, loving God brings each one of us into the fullness of His
righteousness and empowers us to go out there and bear witness to His
truth and goodness. With Christ along, that cross is lightly carried
and swiftly brought to victory.
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