God's Laws of Love

In both of the readings today, Leviticus 19: 1-2, 11-18 and Matthew 25: 31-46 we are given what God expects of us.  Leviticus spells out the 10 commandments. The Gospel tells us that if we minister to, or do not minister to,  those who are hungry, sick, naked, in prison, do not welcome a stranger, or give drink to the thirsty we do minister to, or do not minister, to Jesus.  In God's Kingdom, those who did not minister to Jesus here on earth will be separated from God in heaven, that is, they will be imprisoned in hell. To those who helped those in need, the doors to heaven will be opened.

It is the clear!  We are here to minister to others, to serve others, to make life bearable for others, to lift burdens, to treat others with justice and kindness and love. And in doing so, we are serving God, lifting God's burdens, treating God with kindness and love.  The Trinity,  Christ himself with the Spirit and the Father, live in each person and what we do that person we do to God. The love and the justice we withhold from others we withhold from God. Love and justice triumph in heaven and those of us who failed here on earth to heed Jesus' world will suffer the consequences in heaven: separation or alienation from God for all eternity, an eternity of hell!

You and I, all humankind, are empowered to treat others with respect, to be just, to love others as God loves us, to respect others as brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.  How did that come about? Jesus became sin for us and suffered the consequences of sin on the cross. In dying for our sake, for our salvation, Jesus rose to new life. Death had no power over Him and has no power over us. In rising to new life, destroying the death of sin, Jesus took us with Him in His resurrection so, in cooperation with grace, we, too, are empowered to rise above sin and live for God and for others!

What an awesome God! What a caring God!  What a forgiving God. What a merciful God!

Making Right Choices

Choose life, we are asked in today’s first reading, Dt. 30: 15-20, by turning your hearts to the Lord, listening to God and not allowing yourself to be “led stray and adore and serve other gods.”  Moses reminds the Israelites that he has “set before[the]  life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.  For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land that the Lord swore he would give to your fathers/[mothers] Abraham [and Sarah], Isaac [and Rebecca], Jacob [and Leah and Rachel].”

The questions you and I need to ask ourselves are: Am I choosing life? Am I choosing blessing? Am I choosing to love the Lord, our God, with my whole heart, mind, soul and will?  Am I heeding God’s voice and holding fast to the Lord? Or am I making choices that are not life-giving? Am I holding fast to promises that are not in line with what God is asking of me?  Am I serving idols, non-gods, God-substitutes? Am I seeking security in wealth, money, an accumulation of material things, sex—running from one relationship to another and another and giving sacrificial love to no one? 

In today's Gospel, Luke 9: 22-25, Jesus says to us:  If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily..."  Am I refusing to take up the cross of serving others, making sacrifices for others in my love for them,  of being faithful to the vows I have taken in marriage or in religious life?

Faithfulness to Call to Love

Today’s first reading, 3 John:  5-8, begins with the phrase: “Beloved, you are faithful in all you do for the brothers and sisters, especially for strangers; they have testified to your love before the Church.”  Immediately, I thought of the Foundress of my religious community, Venerable Mother Frances Streitel, and the young women who dedicated their lives to the Gospel as Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother between the years of 1883-1895.  From 1888-1895, many of these young women were sent to the U.S. from Europe, beginning in 1888. In 1889, 1890, 1891, 1893 and 1895 hospitals, orphanages, schools and a health resort were opened to attend to the needs of immigrants, of the sick and the poor and parentless and uneducated children.  These young women religious left everything to follow Jesus.  Strangers could count on these women to respond to their desperate need.  These acts of heroism continue to this day by men and women religious and by lay men and women who leave their homelands in search of ways to support their families and to respond to brothers and sisters in Christ.

And Jesus says: “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me (Mt 25:40).

These strangers testify, today,  before God in eternity “to the love of these young women religious who had  given their all to meet unmet need with the wealth that consumed them: God’s love, God’s compassion, God’s mercy.  They had little of nothing of this world’s goods but like Peter and John before the poor man sitting at the door of the Temple they could say: We have no money, but in the name of Jesus, we give you God’s love,  God’s compassion and God’s mercy. 

These heroic deeds on the part of women and men religious and parents who sacrifice everything to give their children what they need—that is, God’s love, God’s compassion and the good that comes from sacrifice  and learning to give of their all  to help others—continue to this day.

What role are you and I playing in this world so much in need to selfless giving for God’s sake?

The deeper purposes of things

The opening line of today’s first reading, 1 Peter 4: 7-13, is “Beloved: The end of all things is at hand.”  Keeping our end in mind, knowing that the day of our rebirth into eternal life could be any day, would we, I wonder, live today differently?  Believing the end time was imminent, St. Peter instructs us to “love intensely”, to “be hospitable to others without complaining,” and to use the gifts we have been given “to serve one another.” 

Wow!  What a message for all of us awaiting, if you will, our end time here on this earth.  We are here for one thing and one thing only, to love intensely, not half-heartedly or lukewarmly.  What happens to a person on this journey of love and transformation by Love when a person’s innate ability to love as God loves, to forgive as God forgives, to make whole as God makes whole, to serve others as God serves us,  when a person has been taught that life is solely about  filling it with material things, about never saying “no” to oneself, about using sex as an experiment, a thing of pleasure and instant gratification with no commitment or responsibility, with little or no love for self or others. What if one has been taught to perceive life from purely a narcissistic, consumeristic, materialistic, pragmatic, scientific end and only for personal aggrandizement and glorification of the self  with the deeper purposes of existence being ignored, avoided and untaught.

Seeing us misunderstanding and abusing the end for which we have been put here on this earth—to love as God loves—would Jesus not do for us what He did when, in today’s Gospel, He saw how the Temple  was converted  into a “den of thieves”? Would he not teach us the real purpose of life on this earth, its sacredness, its holiness, as He taught the moneychangers the real purpose of the Temple?

Who made your breakfast this morning?

Notice today’s Gospel Reading, Jn 21: 1-14. Peter, John and other disciples have been out fishing all night on the Sea of Tiberias. They have caught nothing. Jesus, out of nowhere, appears on the shore and asked them: “Have you caught anything to eat,” as if He didn’t know.  When they respond “No, nothing”—such respect on the part of Jesus—He suggests that they cast their nets on the other side of the boat! As they do that, He begins preparing breakfast for them.  What an act of generosity and earthiness: Jesus, the Son of God, the Risen Christ, making breakfast for His friends and serving them as He did at the Last Supper!

My response: “Lord, that is you in each of our lives, in my life.  You appear out of nowhere. Sometimes I recognize you. At other times, I do not!  Sometimes, I am John pointing You out to others. Sometimes I am the one who learns of Your presence through another. At times, like Peter, I race toward You, even after having denied you and/or pretended that I did not know you, that is, I did not want to be associated with certain kinds of people, places, or things. At times  I have avoided those who might challenge me, the one’s you put in my life for my conversion, for my sanity, for my well-being. You take no notice, but eagerly serve me “breakfast,” and then intimately converse with me afterwards, asking me if I love you! Your love for me, of course, has never waned. You are madly in love with me, with all of us,  all of the time, seeking ways to appear out of nowhere to serve our needs , draw us closer to You, and give us directions as well as an example of  serving others and building up the Kingdom of God on this earth!