Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
Brothers and sisters:
What will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine,
or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?
No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly
through him who loved us.
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities,
nor present things, nor future things,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.-Romans 8:35-37-39
Make a blank space in this epistle lesson where Christ is named, on the first line and on the last. Then place your own name there.
Why?
As Christians, named after Christ himself, we are meant to keep his commandments. He says, “If you love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he will send you another comforter, the Spirit of truth.”
St. John the Apostle of Love tells us, “His commandments are not burdensome.” The Savior himself says “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
What are the chief commandments of Christ Jesus? They are right after the love of God: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” and even more, his “new commandment, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
Now go back to your name in the blank spaces. Could those around you, your family and closest friends and coworkers especially, say of you what St. Paul says of Christ in his consoling rhetorical question?
Do they instinctively know that you will always love them no matter what? They surely have their faults and you surely have had your disagreements and disappointments, but after all that, are they secure in your love?
You might reply in your own defense that you are not always sure of their love. Well, fill in your name in another beautiful assertion of the apostle: “Love consists in this, not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us.” Love does not wait for reassurance, but it takes the initiative and loves first. This is the only way to love securely. “For better or worse” we say in the Church’s wedding vows.
Unlike the love of Christ, which is perfect, since he is Love, our love is imperfect and so is the love of those who love us. To receive an imperfect response to our love is the order of the day for one who is determined to obey the Master’s command. We are not in control of the inner life or perceptions of others, and so sometimes their love seems to be the opposite, even as they give us what they think we need. We have to dig down deep below the changeable and imperfect humanity with which our love is presented and find the longing, desiring heart that wants to love us and wants us to love, no matter what.
Our response to the perfect love of Christ is never perfect, but he is not touchy or demanding; he accepts what we can give. In accepting our love, he perfects it with his own and makes our love part of his.
Indeed, how would we have any idea of so perfect a love unless we had seen the example in other Christians who are near to us? For others around us to believe in the love of Christ, we need to show forth his love to them. This always involves a risk that our love may not be understood or accepted; it may even be rejected, and yet this risk must be taken. We cannot wait for perfect assurance in obeying the commandments of love. We have to start now and first, without waiting for a “security deposit” on our love.
Consider the hardest commandment of love: “Love your enemies!” The Lord says that fulfilling this commandment will make us like our heavenly Father; that we will become “perfect as he is perfect.” We may ask, “But how can I do that?”
He gives an immediate answer when he gives the commandment. He tells us, “Pray for those who persecute you.” Prayer is an act of love, in a certain sense the greatest because it directly links our love to God who is and who is the source of our love. It is Our Lord who prayed from the altar of the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!” He was not justifying the evils done to him, but healing sinners, us, who had committed them. We can do the same united to him in hope.
He was praying for you and me, of whom it is written “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
This is a true spiritual discipline, a program for setting our inner life on the right course. All our Masses, rosaries, prayers, penances, and works of mercy find their real value in this, our love of God and his will that we perseveringly love our neighbors.
This is the way of the saints, the way of the cross, the only true way to find perfect joy in the possession of the all-powerful love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Let us ask the mighty assistance of Our Lady, the Mother of Fair Love and the Mother of Mercy and model our lives on this act of love:
O my God I love you above all things since you are infinitely good and deserving of all my love. For the love of you I love my neighbor as myself. I pardon all who have injured me, and ask pardon of all whom I have injured. O Lord, increase my love!