Reflections on the Death of my Dad

        I have counseled you before, and it bears repeating, to be careful and deliberate in choosing your words when you are attending the bedside of a person who is dying or in such a serious condition that he appears to be unconscious and incognizant to your presence. People who are too weak to open their eyes may nevertheless be sensitive to what you are saying to them or about them and your words may help them or hurt them depending on what you say. They say that the hearing is the last thing to go; so make sure when you are ministering to a dying soul that your last words spoken in their presence are loving and truthful.

       Let me offer a case in point. My Dad had been bedridden in a nursing home for several days in a terribly weakened condition. Parkinson’s disease had paralyzed his throat muscles making it almost impossible for him to swallow. Despite our best efforts and his to give him something to eat and drink, he was virtually unable to take nourishment or fluid into his body. After a week of this torture he was exhausted and found it more to his comfort to lay with his eyes closed sleeping or trying to sleep. One afternoon, he had been quietly resting with his eyes closed. We thought he was asleep, when an aide entered the room to visit. You know how those encounters go. We were all whispering, trying not to wake him. We, then, in hushed tones introduced our father to this new person who would be caring for him. We wanted her to see him as a real person, not just another patient on a bed. In the course of relating pertinent biographical information about him to the aide, his beloved daughter-in-law interjected that he had served in the Army in World War II, at which point Dad opened his eyes, sat upright in bed and said forcefully, without hesitation, “I was in the Marines!” We laughed. He laughed and my wife, who doesn’t know the halls of Montezuma from the shores of Tripoli, stood corrected.

    Those of you who, like my Dad, were around in the 1940s know what he was saying. My Dad, Ralph String, graduated from high school in May of ’45 and at the tender age of 17 enlisted in the Marines. On Friday June 13th of that year, his mother took him to the train station in Cleveland, Ohio, where he boarded a train for South Carolina; destination: Parris Island. Once there, he would over 90 days train for the planned invasion of Japan. You will not hear me criticize President Truman for dropping atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Had we not done that, had we invaded Japan, Ralph String and a hundred thousand other graduates of the class of ‘45 like him surely would have died; I would not have been born and we wouldn’t be here this morning.

    But thanks be to God, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally in August of ’45.  Shortly after that, Ralph was sent to Providence Rhode Island where he peacefully served out the remainder of his enlistment. One weekend when he had leave, he took a train to Washington, DC, to visit his high school sweetheart. Barbara was a student there at Marjorie Webster, a finishing school, as they used to call it. Two weeks prior to his visit, having learned of  Barbara’s desire to see this young man with whom she had gone, the year before, to the senior prom, the headmistress of the school wrote to my Grandfather to ask if his daughter had permission to leave campus to see young Ralph String. My grandfather, who was at the time the senior attorney for the White Sewing Machine Company in Cleveland, dictated a two page letter to his secretary outlining the strict conditions under which Ralph might visit his daughter Barbara. That visit took place in June of ’46. Three years later Ralph and Barbara were married. Three years later I came along, the first of what would become a family with three boys, and the rest, as they say, is history.

      My intention this morning is not to bore you with the tiring details of my Dad’s biography or brag to you of his many achievements. But I am proud of him. He amassed one of the three biggest and best collections of political campaign buttons in the United States and generously donated that collection to the Cleveland City Club where it is on permanent display. He was for many years the three cushioned billiard champion at the Cleveland Athletic Club, representing the club in many national and international tournaments. And he was recognized in Fortune magazine once as one of the fifty leading stock brokers in America. His three sons, he grandson and business partner each spoke at his funeral which went on for an hour and a half. All five speakers wept and said essentially the same thing: He was our hero. And he was a man of great faith. He was raised in the Evangelical and Reformed tradition. His grandfather, The Reverend Jesse String, was the minister at the local church, so it’s no surprise that Ralph had perfect Sunday school attendance for all his years up to college. But he was proud of his son who became an Episcopal priest and to be supportive of me he and my mother both joined the Episcopal Church and were confirmed the same year that I entered seminary. When we repaired the windows here at St. George’s and St. Mathew’s, he and my mother donated the ascension window above our high altar. He loved this congregation and every Sunday afternoon when I’d call him after church to talk things over, he would always ask about all of you.

      Things happen for a reason, though we often don’t see until much later what the reason was. My daughter Emile along with her husband and two children were in Cincinnati the last week of September to attend a wedding. After the wedding, instead of flying straight home as they had planned, Emile said to her husband, “I think we should drive up to Cleveland and visit grandpa.” Craig agreed. They called Dad and asked if they could come to visit. He loved the idea. But we learned later that after the call he ominously told his care-giver, “I know why they’re coming.” Why?” she asked. “It’s the last time.” They drove up to see him on a Wednesday.  He made a special effort to be up and dressed that day. He pushed himself and stayed awake and didn’t take a nap as he otherwise would have done. They had lunch together and took pictures. The last picture ever taken of Ralph shows him holding his granddaughter Barbara, named after the girl he took to the senior prom, his wife of 60 years, on his lap.  Emilie, Craig and the grandchildren left late in the afternoon. Dad immediately went to lie down saying he was exhausted. That night his caregiver called 911. He had a urinary tract infection that had become septic.

       As soon as I heard about it, I made plans to travel to Cleveland. I caught an early flight Monday morning from BWI to Cleveland. With my carry-on in hand, I then took a cab to the University Hospital By 10am I was standing by his bedside. He woke up when I entered the room. It was October 3rd. I said, “Dad, Happy Birthday!” “How old am I? He asked. “89” I said.” That’s impossible,” he said, “I never thought I’d be 89. Good to see ya.” He then closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

      It’s sad to be with your parent who’s dying, but that’s not to say that the event is without its good moments. God’s grace knows no bounds. The Lord said to Saint Paul “My power is made perfect in your weakness”; in other words when we’re at our lowest, God’s grace is often most abundant. That was the case with my Dad; the last two weeks of his life were overflowing with love and even in the midst of imminent death, we found joy.

     I arrived on Monday. Wednesday, he transferred by ambulance from the hospital to a nursing home, the same facility to which we had taken my mother six years before. The goal in taking him there was to do therapy, in hopes that Dad would get well enough to go home again. But it became clear quickly that he had moved beyond therapy. A proud man who had lived 60 years in the same home was not going to accept in a nursing home. I was supposed to come home Thursday but that afternoon I watched my Dad struggling in vain to do the exercises and it hit me like a ton of bricks in the chest that he was not able to do this. And I said to myself, “My Dad’s dying.” I called Conni and said, “I can’t come home.” That night I retired to my father’s house, sat in his favorite chair and cried for thirty minutes. It doesn’t really matter how old you are or how old your parents are, or how strong your faith is in the resurrection, when death comes for your Mom or Dad, it’s a sad day. But faith is a real strength. Sunday morning, after only three full days in the nursing home he looked me in the eye and said, “I’m not going to live.” I said, “Dad we all love you and want you to live.” He said in a whisper, “I’m not doing this anymore.” I sighed and said, “How do you feel?” he thought it over and said, “I feel confident.”

      I knew what that meant. I immediately went out into the hall and called my brother who said, “We need to take him home, now.” I agreed. I went back into the room by his bedside and said, “Dad, we’re getting out of here and going home.”  “Good, I hate this place,” he said.” Well”, I said, resigning myself to face the end, “when we get home I’ll pour you an Old Granddad.” He used to like to have a drink before dinner.” He looked at me and smiled. “Thanks,” he said, “that’ll finish me off.” We both laughed.

      You wouldn’t think that there’d be much laughter when a soul is dying, but God blessed us throughout those final days with a lot of holy laughter. We got Dad home and under hospice care. I can’t say enough good things about Western Reserve Hospice. They were compassionate and attentive. We got the hospital bed set up in his bedroom, right in front of the TV so we could watch the Indians in the World Series. We’re talking about a devout life-long Indians fans here, a guy who vividly remembered the 1948 World Series and bragged that he once had Bob Feller as a customer, the Indians star pitcher who led them to the championship. One afternoon he asked me, “What time’s the game?” “Not until 8” I said. “I don’t think I can make it till 8” he said. “You have to.” I said, “ You don’t want to miss the game.” If I’m still a live tonight wake me up” he said.  Then he said to me in a more somber tone, “What’s going to happen to me?” “Well, Dad, the way it’s going I think you’re gonna die.” “What can we do about it?” he asked. “We can take you back to the hospital and get an IV and try something else” I said.  Without a pause he said, “I’m not goin’ back to that place, no way. I love my beautiful home.”  “Well then, Dad, I guess we’ll stick it out here.” I said “And then I added, “When you get to heaven, put in a good word for me, will ya?” He thought it over smiled and said, “That won’t be easy.” “Why not?” I asked. “I know ya.” Some things you just can’t make up.

      I have often thought to myself that were I dying slowly, I’d like for someone to read the Psalms to me. I guessed that maybe he would like that to. One afternoon I said to him, “Dad would you like me to read to you from the Bible?” He said, “Yes, “I’d like that very much.” So I began to read to him from the Psalms. I read the 23rd Psalm with those beautiful words “Ye though I walk thru the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me”. After that, he asked for a sip of water, sips were all he could take. Then he said, “Read that one again, I liked that.” So I read it again and kept reading Psalms to him for about thirty minutes when he said, “That’s enough; I’m tired. But thank you. I’ll remember that forever.”

      Again later in the week, about two days before he died, we prayed the Lord’s Prayer. I had been praying with him each night, for those two weeks often with his caregiver, holding hands. That night he prayed along with me and afterwards he held my hand a long time and then in a hoarse whisper said, “Thanks be to God!” Those were his last words. After that he became too weak to speak; morphine kept him under. He was gone about 48 hours later.

                                                                                 ***

    It was a privilege to be with my father for the last two weeks of his life; a privilege that you, in part, made possible. I could not have done this without your support. You not only allowed me the time, but you gave me a lot of strength. There is a natural tendency in us to run away from death, to avoid those who are dying, to not even think about the final end. Death is frightening and the death of a parent is in some ways the worst of all. During those fateful two weeks I was constantly out of breath, like a passenger on a sinking ship might feel, every moment was an emergency and I felt like I was sinking under the weight of knowing that nothing I was doing would change the final outcome. I felt exhausted, without relief, too tired to sleep. I cried at times uncontrollably. It was hard. But I knew that I had a job to do. “Take up your cross and follow me,” Jesus said. That means, “Don’t think about yourself but, like Simon of Cyrene who was pressed into service to carry Christ’s cross, be strong for him who needs you.” I remembered what I learned from you and I did what so many of you have done. That’s a beautiful thing about the church; we learn from each other how to be faithful and how to be strong. So you were with me all the while and I thank you for that. I thank my wife for abandoning her office to be by my side, it helps when you’re in the lion’s den to have your loved ones near, to know that someone’s a witness to your sorrow; that others are praying for you; just knowing that someone cares is an enormous source of strength. But to have the church with you is the greatest strength of all.

     So that is the story of how I came to enter a very elite club, the club of those who no longer have mom or dad with them. We are orphans now. But we are not alone. Our faith informs us that our true parents rule a kingdom not of this world; and that we have an inheritance in that kingdom that exceeds all worldly expectations. Therefore, in the end, we see thru our tears and we know that there is only one fitting way for men and women of faith to conduct themselves and that is to go on: to go on honoring our parents in the only way that counts, by loving one another as Christ loves us. And we do so with confidence that those who love God will not only be reunited again on the last day when our Judge appears but that we are already, here and now, in life and death bound as one eternally in His love. And that is our great consolation: that love never ends but is continually renewed in Him who loves us all.

The Revered Jansen String

St. George’s and St. Matthew’s, Dundalk, MD

November 13, 2016

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.