Living in the Power of Humble Love

August 21, 2016—The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity  

             One of the greatest novels in Western literature is The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It explores the question of how to love thy neighbor when that neighbor is the one conspiring against you. In it, the most inspiring character is the wise old Russian orthodox monk, Fr. Zosima. He at one point counsels the brothers who are struggling with anger and with the challenge of loving unlovable people. How do you handle people who are cruel and mendacious and always scheming to get an edge on you? Fr. Zosima in his passionate eloquence put it like this:  “Brother’s,” he said, “have no fear of men’s sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants: love everything. If you love everything you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love… At some thoughts one stands perplexed, especially at the sight of men’s sin, and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things. There is nothing else like it.”

Without naming him specifically, the old monk applied the lesson of Jesus Christ to the lives of those who came to him for advice. Jesus lived by humble love and look what he accomplished. He made no scientific discovery. He led no great army into battle. He did not write a book or make a fortune. He lived at home with his mother until he was thirty and then died three years later. Nevertheless, he soon became and remains today the most admired man in the history of humankind. How did he go from the obscurity of Galilee to universal acclamation? He accomplished this seemingly impossible feat by exercising, as no other man ever has, the power of humble love.

        A good sermon makes one point clearly. The point of this sermon is it to urge us all, myself included, to heed the wisdom of Fr. Zosima: when difficult people are getting you down and defeat you and you feel an urge to fight them for control, use humble love and you will subdue them. This is the example of Jesus who by the power of his love overcame even death and the grave. It’s the only thing that really works. As Fr. Zosima said,  “There is nothing else like it." Let me tell you a story from my brief life that may illuminate the point.

       One day when I was a student attending classes at the Harvard Divinity School, eons ago, I was walking on the sidewalk of a busy street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was late in the afternoon and the sidewalks were jam-packed with pedestrians rushing, pushing, butting elbows—each one intensely pre-occupied with so many things important only to himself or herself. You know how people are. We walk in a hurry thinking about where we have been and about what we will encounter when we get to where we’re going. We get so caught up inside our own minds that we fail to see where we are. I was one of those people that day, just one more pedestrian in a rushing river of pedestrians, absorbed in myself and paying little attention to the others around me. I was, like the anonymous crowd I was in, just one more soul on a sidewalk so anxious to get to my next appointment that I had no cognizance of the world around me; until I had to stop to cross the street. It was then, when I was forced by a red light to pause and observe my surroundings, that I saw something, something that shook me out my somnambulism and so caught my attention that to this day I have not forgotten it.  I noticed on the sidewalk directly across the street from me an injured bird. She lay helpless on the curb with a broken wing unable to fly. She was suffering. As I pondered her fate, I saw something also of equal significance: no one was paying attention to her. Everyone walked right by her. No one seemed to care. How did this happen? And how long had this poor bird been in this wretched condition? Hours, maybe, who knows? But in the short time I observed her, dozens of people just passed her by, giving her no thought, whatsoever. It was though she didn’t exist and was of no importance to anyone. And indeed, what are we talking about? We are only talking about a little sparrow, after all. It’s not a person. Thousands of inconsequential birds die every day. We don’t cry over them. We don’t even see them. They come. They go. And their being makes no appreciable difference. And yet, in this moment, on that sidewalk, I felt so sorry for that wounded bird. But the feelings of compassion that arose in my heart for this bird left me feeling disgusted with myself and with the selfishness of the human race whose cardinal sin is that we care for nothing and no one so much as ourselves. It wasn’t that those passing by the bird and doing nothing who disgusted me. It was the confession of my soul that I could not escape. It was the bald and naked truth that I was not about to do anything for that bird either. What could I have done? Could I have picked it up and carried it to class with me? “I ‘m running late,” I thought, “It’s not up to me. It’s not my problem.” This is how I thought to rationalize my indifference. Here before me was a suffering creature, a being in need of help. Who was I to ignore that creature’s fate? Did not Our Lord say that he cares for every sparrow that falls? Is there not a command implicit in that declaration to care; about the plants, the insects, the animals, about everyone and everything? In that moment I saw how deeply everything matters to God and how little it all means to us who live upon the earth and depend upon God but take it all for granted. I suddenly felt revulsion at the manifest selfishness of everyone on that sidewalk, horrified by a world that doesn’t care and doesn’t listen to our Lord who cares for his whole creation. I was about to cry or scream, I don’t remember which, when suddenly a man with a beard wearing what looked like a black cassock, came along, as if out of nowhere, spied the bird, and in one smooth motion paused before the bird, bent over her to examine her and then lifted her gently. Cradling the wounded creature in his hands, holding her close to his heart as a mother does her child, he carried her away to safety.

        That incident struck me as being a kind of living parable. How much suffering there is in this world and how callous most of us are to most of it most of the time? Maybe we have to be or we would lose our minds. But to paraphrase Jesus loosely, what does it benefit a man to keep his sanity if he should lose his soul in the process? God has given us life for one purpose, so that we might show him how much we care for those who suffer wrong, who are broken by the wheel of life and injured, wounded and left for dead by the side of a road. Life is a test and those who pass with the highest grade are those who open their hearts the widest, those, like that stranger on the sidewalk who cared even for a fallen bird as he would have his own son. His humble love put the rest of us on that street to shame.

        For several Sundays, we have preached on the theme of love; on how we may fulfill the great commandment of Christ to “Love the lord your God with all your heart and love thy neighbor as thyself.” Why preach on love for so many Sundays?  Love seems like such a simple common thing. You’d think that we could say a few words about love in one sermon and exhaust the subject quickly.  Love sounds easy to do and we are all familiar with it, but as we know from life experience, love is not easy. It requires a lot of self-control and determination, patience and goodness, humility and generosity, empathy and a deep reserve of kindness to love. Saint Paul said that love never ends. Love affairs end and friendships end, but love itself never ends. Our need for love never ends, and even if everyone on the planet quit loving each other and succumbed to hate, love would continue because love originates not in our souls but in God’s sacred and eternal heart. There is no end to God’s love for us. God is love. God is the source of love. The love we share with each other, we first receive from him. Therefore, the closer we are to God and the more open our heart is to His Spirit, the more love we have to share. If the world is like a desert in need of water, God the Holy Spirit is a fountain of living water, of pure life-giving love, in the midst of that desert, a fountain that never dries up and that is available to anyone who wants to drink of it. God wants nothing so much from each of us as that we drink from the fountain of his love, be filled with his Holy Spirit and that we love one another, as he loves us. This is the essence of the teaching of Jesus a message that is proclaimed on every page of the New Testament.

       And nowhere is that message more beautifully stated than in the first letter of John 4.7-21. If someone asked you “What is the message of Jesus?” You could look here to find it. I urge you to read this chapter of the Bible over and over again until it sinks into your soul. And the essence of it is in verse 10-11: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” Don’t get hung up on the word “expiation.” It’s a word used by theologians to explain the redemptive power of Christ’s death on the cross. It means that his death was a sacrifice offered to God that put away the guilt of our sins. I’m not going to explain today how Christ accomplished that act of expiation or how such a thing could be. I’m only today calling our attention to what motivated God to do this for us. And that can be said in one word: love. As Jesus put it: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all who believe in him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3.16).

       When you look at a crucifix what do you see? Some see nothing but a man dying on a tree. But when we look at a crucifix through the lens of faith, we see The Son of God, offering himself to the Father, and we see in his outstretched arms God welcoming a world of sinners into his kingdom. The world looks at the crucified Jesus and sees just one more death. But as Christians look at him and see God’s sacred heart revealed, his love for us is exposed.

       And so we are drawn to him who loves us so much that he was willing to die for us. “No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus said. He said that in reference to himself on the night before his arrest and trial and execution. He knew what was about to happen to him, but he did not run away from it or try to escape. He went to his death willingly because it was only by dying for us that we would ever know how much He loves us.

       Don’t take God’s love for granted. Don’t think you’re so special that you deserve salvation. As sinners, we deserve nothing from God but rejection. And yet God has not rejected us. Like that wounded bird on the sidewalk, God has come to us in his Son, redeemed us and made us his own. And there is only one thing that God asks from us in return: that we do the same for others. Seek out the most difficult people in your life and make them your own. Do not reject them but forgive them, pity them and win their hearts by giving them a full measure of the very thing their heart is so obviously lacking: compassion, understanding and care.

           Don’t let the world conquer you. To the extent that you are indifferent to the fate of suffering humanity, to the extent that you no longer care about anyone but yourself, you have been conquered. You can conquer the world and Jesus has shown us how to do this. His way is counterintuitive but it’s the only way that succeeds. “Take up your cross and follow me.” he said.  What is that but a call to follow him in the way of humble love? If you want to be a Christian in more than a nominal sense, if you want to be faithful to your baptismal vows and filled by the Holy Spirit, then determine once and for all to become a person of perfect love. He who proclaimed that the meek will inherit the earth and who went to his death like a lamb that before its shearers is mute, practiced what he preached. Follow him and walk the way of humble love and as Fr. Zosima said, by it you will subdue the world.

The Good Samaritan and the Agape of God

August 14, 2016—The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity                                        

       The New Testament was written in Greek for a reason. God chose that ancient language for his written gospel because his gospel is about a special kind of love, for which the Greeks have the perfect word. The Greeks have three words for love. One is “philia” from which the city of Philadelphia takes its name. And Philadelphia means what? (No, it is not Greek for cream cheese). It means “brotherly love”. “Philia” speaks to the affection and sentiment that binds family and friends. It expresses itself as loyalty, fraternity, fidelity. This is the love with which we are most familiar day to day. Then there is “eros," the bond that unites lovers who are drawn together in sexual passion. This is the love they say the average man thinks about 90 percent of his waking hours; and you wonder what’s wrong with the world. When Jesus spoke of love, he seldom spoke of “philadelpia” and never “eros.” He most often used the word “agape”; it’s a word seldom used in ancient literature except in the New Testament where it’s used on almost every page. Agape is holy love, the love that originates in God’s heart and is therefore, perfect. When Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount “be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” (Mt.5.48), he meant that we should aim to become living souls who’s every word and deed is motivated by and expresses agape, the holy and perfect love of God.  

      God sent his Son into the world to reveal the perfect love of God. Jesus modeled that love by his sinless life; a life lived in perfect conformity with God’s will and word right up to his death on a cross. But In him we have more than an example of holiness to emulate. In Him we have a true Savior who rescues us who have fallen into sin, and lifts us up to his level of perfect holiness, that with his help and by his grace we might become as He is: one with God the Father in perfect love.

          In the sermon last Sunday, I spoke to you about the Parable of the Prodigal Son, a story that illustrates the unconditional love of God our Father (Lk.15.11-32). This week I’m going to speak about the parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk.10.25-37). These two parables are intimately related and together they convey the entire gospel of God’s perfect love. These two parables are two sides of the same coin, a coin that says on one side “Love the Lord your God with all your heart mind and soul” and on the other it says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself." In the Parable of the Prodigal Son Jesus shows us the depth of God’s love for us. We are never going to be happy as individuals or united as a society until we come together in God whose love alone has the power to unite us. But that is only half of the gospel. In the Parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus shows us that just as God loves us, so must we love one another; for love is nothing but sentiment and poetry until it is freely shared with those in need.

        Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan in response to a young man who asks him, “Who is my neighbor?” But Jesus doesn’t take the bait and get into a game of trying to define who is or is not my neighbor. He ignores that trick question and like a good politician who keeps on message no matter what, Jesus talks about he wants to talk about: sainthood. Jesus doesn’t quibble about who is or is not a neighbor. The bigger question to him, the only question to him is who is and who is not fulfilling the law to love their neighbor. Do you love? Do you? Do you really love others as God loves us? That was Jesus’s passion. He told the parable of the Good Samaritan to make his point that those who love God must show it by loving others as God loves us.

        As he would tell his disciples on the night of the Last Supper, the only evidence there is that a man or woman loves God is by the love we show for one another (John13.35). And remember what Jesus meant by love. He did not mean merely the camaraderie that good ol’ boys have for each other or the secret intimacy that lovers share in bed. He meant “agape." Where agape is absent, there is no love of God. And again what is agape? Well, that is what the Sermon on the Mount is about. Jesus summarized his doctrine of agape in the prelude to that sermon, in the immortal words that we call the Beatitudes (Mt.5.1-10). There, with the power of beauty and grace Jesus set forth his vision of love. In these words the Son of God, who has come to us from the heart of the Father, tells us what he has seen in heaven where love is all in all. And this is what he tells us: Love is a hunger and a thirst for righteousness, a desire to be and do good always. Love does not recoil at the misery of others but is empathic towards those who suffer, humble and ready to serve even the lowest people in society. Love is infinitely merciful, and kind, even to those who are unkind to you. Love is gentle, love seeks to live in peace not only with your own kind but with all people. And love is strong. Love does not quit being love. No matter what they do to you, love just keeps loving them back. Love never ends. That was Jesus’s way of agape and He calls each of us to follow Him in living that way. 

       Jesus’s mission was and is to turn faithless sinners into faithful saints in whose rock solid conviction and purity of heart the lost souls of this world will see the kingdom of heaven revealed. Jesus’s mission was and is to build up an army of saints whose love for sinful humanity is as strong as his own and who will by the power of that love draw the world to Our Blessed Lord. A saint is one who lives in a spirit of agape as Jesus did, pouring out mercy and compassion, pity and empathy for those who suffer, who come to their rescue with no questions asked; seeking nothing in return but the privilege and satisfaction of knowing that you did the right thing.

       Christ made the hero of his great parable a Samaritan, an outsider. The Samaritans were to the Jews as the Yankees were to the Confederates. Israel fought a civil war several centuries before Christ was born; a war that left the Samaritan Jews and the Jerusalem Jews embittered and estranged from each other. Imagine going to Atlanta in 1865 and telling a story in which the hero is General Sherman. Why did Jesus do this? Because the Jews in his generation to whom he had come in fulfillment of their scriptures treated him as though he were a Samaritan, and not their king. They rejected Him and did not see Him for who he was, but treated Him as though He were a hated adversary. Jesus is the Good Samaritan and the pitiful victim in the ditch dying alone is you and me and every sinner who will perish unless rescued by a redeemer. Jesus is that Redeemer. And yet so many still do not see him for who he really is. They think he’s a stranger, an unorthodox outsider, a man who doesn’t belong to us let alone exercise authority over us. And yet he is our Savior who saves us by the charity that is in His sacred heart; a heart that is as big a God’s and full of agape, the perfect love of the Holy Spirit that heals and redeems the human soul.

       Having loved us who loved him not, he expects us to go forth and do the same for others. Jesus taught us this in the Lord’s Prayer (Mt.6.9-15): “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We pray over and over again. But do we stop to think what we are saying? We are asking God in this prayer to treat us exactly as we treat others and no better. How many of us can pass that test? When Peter asked him how many times must I forgive? Jesus said, seventy times seven, which in effect means infinitely, keep forgiving again and again and again (Mt.18.21).

       And then to illustrate His point, he told a story about a manager who asked the owner of the estate to be forgiven a large debt and the owner forgave him. But then that same manager, when someone who owed him a little asked forgiveness of his little debt, he would not grant it. When the owner of the estate heard about the manager’s hardness of heart, he became so angry that he threw the manager into prison and threw away the key. And Jesus ends the story by warning: so will God to you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart (Mt.18.35).

       When we see Christ on the cross looking down forgiving a world of sinners, remember: He expects you and me to do the same. And our heavenly reward, if there is one, will be in proportion to how we have forgiven others. Forgiveness is not forgetting as if nothing happened. Forgiveness remembers: you don’t want to get burned again. But forgiveness takes the high road and never stoops to the other person’s level. Always be the bigger person. Always take the high road. Turn the other cheek does not mean be a door mat and let others walk all over you. It takes a great deal of courage and integrity, self –discipline and virtue to be strong enough to turn the other cheek. Be that hero: be stronger, better and bigger than the one who hurt. Be like Christ. He went to the cross in obedience to his Father and by so doing he conquered the world. Christ did not come into the world to get even with sinners, he came to save them. And how did he do that? He loved them. As much as he loved God he loved even those who rejected him. In some ways he loved them even more. Love those who hurt you, pray for those who abuse you, bless those who curse you, forgive, them as Christ, the Good Samaritan loved us. Love those who are loveless and though the world may never know it, God will write the title saint before your name in the book of life (Phil.4.3; Rev.20.12).

       The Good Samaritan saved the man given up for dead by pouring wine on his wounds. Jesus saves us by pouring the wine of his blood on our wounded souls. "This is my blood, shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins," He said as consecrated the cup of wine. That is the true “mysterium fidei,” the mystery of faith.  Jesus saves us by His precious blood, the wine of God’s mercy (1Pt.1.19). Every time you kneel at the communion rail and receive the blood of Christ, think of the Good Samaritan rescuing that poor man in the ditch by pouring wine into his wounds and know that you are that man, and Christ has “saved you by his precious blood.”

      Jesus’s two great parables the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan both have the same message: the way to evangelism is by loving others. I have a sign in my office that says “Love is contagious; we catch it from each other.” It’s a cute saying with a deep meaning. Love doesn’t just happen. We learn how to love from others who love us. The church is a school and the Good Samaritan is teaching the most important class. In every encounter with another human being we have an opportunity to put the mystery faith into practice: as Christ had poured the wine of his love on your wounds, pour the wine of your love on others' wounds. Be among the saints who take what Christ has given you and give it generously to others; and so we will, together with Christ, heal this broken world, one soul at a time, until we are able to say we are all one in the faith as He is one, bound forever in the love of the Holy Spirit, the perfect agape of God. 

The Prodigal Son and the Loving Father

August 7, 2016—The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

        How would you answer the question: what was Jesus’s greatest contribution to world history? You might say the cross, which has become the universally recognized symbol of our redemption. You might say the gift of baptism by which the faithful are initiated into His kingdom; or the Holy Eucharist, which is the means by which we directly participate in his sacrifice, thereby, receiving in our souls the salutary benefits of his death. Jesus Christ has left his mark on the world in ways that no other man has. That is beyond dispute. Considering that he was able to raise himself body and soul from the dead and leave us, in the Shroud of Turin, a material memorial of that transphysical event, you could say that he literally left an impression on the world unequaled by anyone.

       But in addition to fulfilling the scriptures by his death and resurrection and instituting the sacraments by which we access the sanctifying grace of his sacrifice, Jesus did one more thing that no one else could do, that no one before him attempted to do. He succeeded in persuading the world that love is the highest value. In a world that worships power and pleasure, that is obsessed with money and sexual fulfillment almost to the exclusion of everything else, Jesus convinced us that the greatest achievement in life is to grow a heart of compassion, humility and forgiveness. He convinced a world consumed with myriad lusts and endless selfish ambitions that the greatest among us are the saints of God, those whose singular passion is not for worldly honors but for holiness expressed as unconditional love.

       Before the early church took the name the Catholic church or even before it was called Christianity, the religion founded on faith in Jesus  was called, simply enough, “the Way” (Acts 9.2). Jesus led the way by setting an example of perfect love (John 14.6). His disciples were those who chose to give up everything that people normally cling to for security in life to follow him in living that way. A lot has changed in the two millennia since Jesus ascended into heaven but Jesus’ message remains today what it was then: always choose the way of humble love; because God is love (1 John 4.8; John 3.16).

        In last week’s sermon I said that Jesus taught that a human being has an immortal soul of divine origin, a soul made to give and receive love. And I furthermore said that the fact that we know ourselves to be soul-full people should be enough to convince us of the reality of God; because souls cannot exist apart from God who creates them. So don’t let the sick secularized world we live in psyche you out. The secular establishment keeps telling us that there is no Creator; that life on earth arose from a series of blind chance events; but this existentialist view of life, as a completely random and meaningless purely spontaneous material event without design or purpose, is utterly absurd. If there is no God there is no human soul and you and your loved ones are essentially worthless piles of clay. No one deep down believes that. No sane person believes that human beings are nothing but a mixture of magnesium, copper, potassium, carbon, and other assorted minerals. No one who has ever been loved by his mother and father believes that. No one who has loved his brother or sister can believe that. Whoever has been in love knows that chemistry alone cannot explain the chemistry between two people. Love is a mystery of the Sprit and one soul who finds his compliment in another knows that he or she has found something that is beyond the reach of science or wisdom to explain. But that’s my point: unconditional love is transcendent. The very existence of love in our hearts is proof of the transcendent nature of our souls. And the transcendent nature of human souls is proof of the existence of God.

        Human beings need love. Without unconditional love, we wither and perish not physically but spiritually. That is so because the human soul needs to give and to receive love. Love is not something we like to have when we can get it, like a year–end bonus or a pay raise. A pay raise may at times feel like a life or death issue, but it never really is. Money comes and money goes but love remains essential to life. Love is to the human soul as oxygen is to our lungs. If we go without it, we begin to suffocate, something within us dies. We need tenderness, we need compassion, we need friendship and affection; we need people to be patient with us, to listen to us, to hear what we’re saying; to understand our feelings and accept our differences. We need to know that others have not given up on us, that we matter, that we belong; that we count no matter what. Love is not a luxury item we can do without; love is essential to our happiness. We are beings made for love. It’s an injustice if a person is deprived of food, shelter and clothing. But it’s a tragedy if a person is deprived of love. A person who died, never having been loved, would have lived an empty existence, for life is only full to the extent that it is full of love. A house is just a house but add love and it becomes home.

       And our true home is with God who is not just a distant powerful deity indifferent to our individual fate, but as the giver of our soul is a true Father to each of us. He is as much your parent as is your mother with one caveat: he loves us even more. This is the revelation that Jesus brought to humankind; a revelation of the divine nature that he illustrated in the greatest of his parables known as the Prodigal Son; a story that might better be called the Loving Father. The point of the parable is as simple as it is shocking: God is radical unconditional love and God expects us to get on board and love one another as he loves us. I say shocking because both sons are shocked by their father’s behavior. It’s as if neither son before this knew who their father was or what his heart was really made of. The younger son couldn’t’ believe it when the father ran out to greet him and offered to welcome him home with a celebration. The younger son was going to offer to come home as a servant. He knew he was guilty and he thought he would be punished, if not utterly rejected. The younger son was left speechless by his father’s unexpected generosity and unconditional forgiveness. But so was the older son shocked. The older son couldn’t believe it either. He said to his father in effect, “Who are you? Do I even know you? What kind of justice is this?” And the father answers, “All that is mine is yours.” In other words: God’s mercy is justice.

       We call this story the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but it really should be called the Parable of the Loving Father. It’s the Father whose passion for his sons that captures our hearts. And so as much as we are moved by the sons’ conversion, we recognize that this is more than a story about our need for penance and faith. This is the paramount story of how to spread the gospel and of how to save souls. We spread the gospel by winning hearts and minds for Christ, the best way to do evangelism, is to do as the Loving Father did. Love them. Love them with so great a love that they cannot resist your love. Love them as the Father loved his sons; love them in other words as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. People will instinctively argue and resist your politics and your religion when you push it on them; but no one argues with unconditional love. Win their hearts with love and soon their souls will hunger to have what you have: the Holy Spirit alive in you, the fountain of God’s Word, joy in your soul.

        As much as preachers would like to imagine that souls are converted by their great preaching, few are. Souls are converted to faith in Jesus Christ by love. Saint Francis knew this which is why he said, “Preach the gospel always; if necessary use words.” How can one preach without words? By living the gospel. The gospel is, after all, a revelation from God as to how we are to live our lives. “The faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) is not just a set of dogmas to which we give our assent; divinely revealed truths we defend with conviction. The faith is nothing until it becomes a way of life. “Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God,” (Eph. 5.1-2) is how Saint Paul put it. That is the church’s marching orders. Go into the world and conquer with love; always remembering what love is and from where it comes. Love is not what happens at an orgy nor is love what happens when you manage to manipulate people to get our own way with them. Love is what happened in a manger in Bethlehem; love is what happened on the cross. Love does not seek its own glory but God’s. Love carries the burden of sinners without complaint. Love does what is right, even to the point of suffering death. Love is holiness in action, a prayer that doesn’t cease. Love forgives even our executioners, because love has a singular aim: to save souls.

         So that is the word for today. Let Jesus Christ love you. Don’t be afraid of his love. Don’t put him off or shut him out. Open your heart to him and let him fill you with the Holy Spirit, the joy of his perfect love with the Father. And then, go out into a world of sinners desperate for love and be saint. Be the one in your family and circle of friends who loves others as Christ loves us; be a person of radical forgiveness and compassion, giving until there is nothing left to give and then, having given your all, offer it up to God who in His Son gave his all to us.  And be assured that as Christ by his love changed the world in his day, He will do the same today through you.