30th Sunday Year A - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2011

The question was: What commandment in the Law is the greatest?  Jesus answered it, telling his hearers that in fact the greatest has two parts to it: Love God with everything, and Love your neighbour as yourself.  Neither part is complete without the other.  Jesus then added for good measure that these two parts are the basis of all behaviour and sum up all the rest of the Law and the teachings of the Prophets.

But there is a problem – a problem St Paul was acutely aware of.  Of themselves, laws are powerless – whether it’s civil laws or Church laws or any Laws.  Knowing what to do doesn’t enable or empower us to do it.  What St Paul wrote in his Epistle to the Romans speaks of the experience of us all: I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.

In civil society, the threat of sanctions or punishments may encourage us to keep the law – but that’s hardly appropriate in this case: Love me – or else!  The threat of punishment makes genuine love difficult, if not impossible.  

Jesus answered the lawyer’s question – but he was not himself on about law.  Certainly, he showed us how to live; he spelt out the consequences of loving .  But loving, and keeping commandments, are not the same thing – by a long shot.  Friends, couples in love, do not give commandments to each other.  

Jesus started somewhere else.  His starting point was: The Kingdom of God is close at hand.  The initiative is God’s.  The source of all love is God.  God is love.  Love is the essence of God.  God is totally and only love.  The process begins with God, who loves us totally, infinitely, unconditionally.  [All true love is unconditional.]  It is that love of God that all other loves are powered by – whether people are clearly conscious of the fact or not.  It is God’s first loving us that interests us, moves us, and then empowers us to love in return; and, with and in and like God, to love ourselves truly, and to love others similarly.

Once we find ourselves caught up in that flow of love, then we seek guidance about how best to do so.  And Jesus showed us and taught us precisely that.  But until we open ourselves to receive God’s empowering energy of love, all the laws in the world and all the threats in the world won’t empower us genuinely and freely to love.  And if it’s not free, whatever else it is, it is not love.

Here we are today, celebrating Eucharist together.  Eucharist is the great occasion when we Catholics hold all that together and celebrate.  Eucharist puts us in touch with the crucified, the risen and forgiving Christ.  In and with him, it connects us to the Father, who sent Jesus into this violent, unsorry world to save us from ourselves and from each other.  We open ourselves in profound thanks to that love.  [Eucharist means, precisely, thanks.]  And God’s love, once received, carries us out to each other.  We do Eucharist together – open to God and open to each other.  Then, as the Father sent Jesus, Jesus now sends us.  We are to bring the love of God to all we meet, to incarnate that love in  our lives, to make it tangible, three-dimensional, to give it skin.

As we celebrate Mission Sunday today, it is important to remember that mission involves us all.  Mission in not complicated.  You don‘t need a university degree.  You do not need to be a priest, or a religious.  We only need to let God love us, to open to that love, to fasten on to it.  And, as God’s love shapes and transforms us, we bring that love to all we encounter.