Called to bear the everlasting fruit of love

In today's Gospel, Luke 6: 12-19, we are told that Jesus went up to the mountain to pray. He spent the entire night there.  Coming down from the mountain, he called his disciples to himself and named the twelve persons who were to carry on His mission after His return to the Father. Jesus continues to call us to be disciples of Good News, the news of His death and resurrection, the news of His presence as Eucharistic food, His presence within us and all around us.  God is closer to us than our very breath. God sustains us, encourages us, strengthens us, counsels us and, yes, continually purifies and sanctifies us through the situations of each day.  The antiphon of the responsorial psalm of today's liturgy, I believe, tells us why: "The Lord takes delight in his people." God delights in you. God delights in me! And, as we pray in the Gospel acclamation of today's liturgy: "[God] chose [us, as He did His twelve apostles] from the world that [we] may go and bear fruit that will last,"and that fruit is love!

You Are Sacred to the Lord, Your God

Today we celebrate the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a feast about love poured out without reserve. Jesus’ heart was pierced upon the cross. Blood and water flowed from His Sacred Heart, a heart so filled with love for humankind, for you and me,  that Jesus willingly accepted His passion and death to save us from eternal death.  In the first reading of today’s liturgy, Dt 7: 6-11, and from the cross, God says to us personally:

• You are…sacred to the Lord, your God
•   …[God] has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth to be a people peculiarly his own
• …the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you are really the smallest of all nations. It was because the Lord loved you and because of his fidelity to the oath he has sworn to your…[ancestors] that he brought you out with his strong hand from the place of slavery, and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

On the cross, God brought you and me out with his strong hand from the place of slavery, and ransomed us from the hand of Satan, from his lies and his determination to snare us in such a way that we alienate ourselves from God for all eternity.  No way would God allow that to happen. God  would go to any extent to save us from Satan's lies and from eternal damnation, sending His Son to show us God’s love and determination to keep us as His own!

Have I set my heart on God as God has set His heart on me? Do I realize that I am sacred to the Lord, my God?  Do I grasp the fact that God has chosen me to be peculiarly His own?  How grateful am I that God has sent His only begotten Son, who was obedient to the Father unto death, to save me from  my disobedience to the Father’s will?

Adopted by God

The entrance antiphon of today’s liturgy from Galatians 4: 4-5 reminds me that “God sent his Son, born of a woman, so that [I] might receive adoption as [God’s child]”.  By that adoption God has made of me a new creation for Himself (opening prayer of the liturgy).

Imagine being an adopted child. As such, one is especially chosen by one’s adoptive parents.  The adopted child is a full participant in all that constitute this adopted family. He/she is inundated in and taught the values of that family.  The faith of that family, the love of that family, the hopes and expectations of that family become part of the essence of this adopted child, if the child is open and receptive  to the family’s love.

Translate that to being God’s adopted child. Everything God offers is mine. As generous as adoptive parents are, God is more generous in sharing what is important to God: my happiness, my peace, my well- being, my growth and becoming the person God desires of me, wills for me, and fosters in me!  No effort to make that my reality is too much for God and nothing is impossible for God. He never gives up.

Wow!  How lucky can I be!  How about you?