Homily: Love Matters

Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 31 / Sunday

Readings: Deuteronomy 6.2-6 / Psalm 17.2-3a, 3bc-4, 47, 51ab (R/v 2) / Hebrews 7.23-28/ Mark 12.28b-34

Sisters and brothers, what keeps you centered or focused or rooted in the face of change?

I have been reflecting on this question as we end our school year.  This is a time of change. Of students moving up to their next year class. Of students graduating and advancing to their next phase of studies. Of new students about to join us. Of teachers retiring or being posted to new schools. Like many in school, I find myself grappling with the changes of a familiar school year passing away and an unknown new year fast approaching.

Do you feel the same as the year approaches its end? 

A mother of our student, Kathryn, gave me some perspective on this when she reflected on our school’s recent graduation ceremony. She spoke about how it was “a celebration of the students’ years in St Joseph's Institution, the friendship they had developed, the growth and learning gained and the promise of the journeys ahead”. She summed up the school’s farewell her daughter and her peers had as “simply and profoundly a message of love to the students” – students who are also in a state of change. For her, love matters: it gave them a foundation, a reference point, a belief, a unifying experience.

Love. What if love must be what matters most in a time of change? Love that roots us to a place and gives us an identity. Love that keeps us focused on experiences that shape and define us and give us reason to live. Love that centers us on family and friends who are our life’s companions.  

Yes, what if love must be what matters most for us? Perhaps, it would mean holding on to love – however, we can – in the midst of a changing world.

Love is at the heart of our gospel passage today.  A scribe asks Jesus which commandment is the first of all? He replies: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And he adds: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Together, these commandments are the greatest, Jesus teaches. 

The first is a calling into love. The second is a commandment to serve with love.

The first commandment calls us into love. Jesus speaks God’s call for us to enter into love.  Into a complete love that holds us. Into the fullness of love where we can rest and find fulfillment. Into the love that is God Himself. 

In this love, God embraces us as we are, however, we are, saint or sinner, alike. Or, as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes, God meets each of us uniquely and particularly:

You are the deep innerness of all things,

the last word that can never be spoken.

To each of us you reveal yourself differently:

to the ship as a coastline, to the shore as a ship.*

This love is at the core of who we are, what we say, and how we act. This love has a name.

We know this name. All our life experiences reveal this name. In our being birthed into life, our being loved and loving, our being forgiven and reconciling, our having hope and becoming better, our being safe and well, our living fully, our potential being realised, our being ourselves, our knowing we are as good enough, we discover this name is God. 

We think about the name of God often. We hold it in our heart always. We speak it ever so often. We do because our God is real and alive.

The second commandment demands we serve with love.  Serve others, not ourselves. We all strive to do this well. Yet, we constantly find ourselves having to learn and re-learn how to love others better. In fact, this part of Jesus’ answer is harder: we need to learn to do it better again and again. And each time we do, we become more compassionate, we share more generously, and we sacrifice more selflessly – no matter our age or gender, our education or ability, our race or religion, our holiness or sinfulness. From a child throwing a tantrum in the playground to an adult sitting through an office meeting, we will be learning and re-learning throughout life to better recognize and embody love to our neighbours and ourselves.

Jesus says: Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. He is inviting us to place our love of God before all else in our lives, and because of this love to love others too.  

The Old Testament already recognized that God must come first.  Our first reading tells us so: “Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.”  Our lives become ordered and work well when we put God first.

Sometimes, we forget how important it is to put God first. We forget because we are too familiar with these words.  We need to listen to them again, let them touch the depths of our hearts. Then we can enflesh them in our lives.

Do you and I dare give God all of our lives as Jesus commands? Dare to because we often struggle to make this choice? We compromise. We pick and choose. We rationalise. We flip and flop. We want both God and the world. Our readings today demand that we make this essential choice.

We can by listening attentively to Jesus’ voice; he wants to lead and guide us. More than listen, he wants us to make his teachings our own, make them matter in our lives and enact them for the good of all. Especially his teachings today – to love God and to love neighbour. 

Only when we live this way, with love for God and neighbour, are we truly Christians.  Even if we talk about Jesus, unless we follow His way of living, we are only talking about Him and not believing in Him with our lives. Jesus wants us to love Him and to live as He lived, as a sacrificial gift for others. Are you and I living like this now?

I know we want to live as Jesus commands but it is challenging when everything changes so quickly. We are always on the go, always changing, always caught up in changes larger than ourselves.

Just consider how change impacts the family. Two people marry and become one. When children come, couple life becomes family life. Then the children grow up; they are constantly changing. Married life changes. Love for each other changes into love for the children, the family, and in time with the children marrying, love for the extended family too. The husband and wife, now mother and father, and in time grandpa and grandma, keep meeting the challenges of changing times. They do this as best as they can. They try to do it all with love.

We also know change in ourselves. We learn about this in our fickleness, perhaps; this always makes us grow up. Daily, we experience change: we shift our opinion and position to accommodate what is best for the common good. We develop new ways of being in relationship with others, with ourselves. This renews us. With grace, in the midst of all changes, we learn to love ourselves and others better.

Love requires space, however. When we are too rigid, we can’t see what is happening in front of our eyes. We treat our children, family and friends as problems to solve rather than as fellow pilgrims to cherish.  To love ourselves and others – and especially to love God who always surprises us – we need to make space for changes to happen. We need to keep ourselves centered, focused and rooted in what must matter most for us and others to flourish. 

Today, Jesus reminds us that love must truly matter, that is, love of God and love for neighbour. When we understand that this essential truth is really God's desire for us, and we make it our own way to love and we practice it always, then his promise that we can enjoy the fullness of life will become ours to have and to hold. It will indeed be ours to delight in. 

How blessed are we that Jesus reminds us again of this essential truth to live our Christian lives. Shouldn’t we live as Jesus desires us to? What are we waiting for? 

*Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, II, 22

Preached at Church of the Transfiguration

photo:  from bethluwandi.com