Love your enemies (Martin Luther King Jr.)

   Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, Love your enemies.  It is this:  that love has within it a redemptive power.  And there is a power that eventually transforms individuals.  Just keep being friendly to that person.  Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long.  Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning.  They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them.  And by the power of your love they will break down under the load.  That’s love, you see.  It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love.  There’s something about love that builds up and is creative.  There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive.  So love your enemies.

--Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight

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How much love... (St. Mother Teresa)

   I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge, he will not ask, How many good things have you done in your life?, rather, he will ask, how much love did you put into what you did? 

 --St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta 

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Sunday Gospel Reflection, February 19, 2017: The temple of God, which you are, is holy...

 The temple of God, which you are, is holy… 

What does it mean to be holy? 

   In the Book of Leviticus, several chapters are devoted to the Holiness Code, a set of rules meant to help humankind live in the context of God’s holiness.  Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy is the message Moses is to convey to the Israelite community.  But what does it mean to be holy?  God explains to Moses that holiness will be found in their relationship with others in their community:  they must not bear hatred in their hearts for one another, but rather, must love their neighbor as themselves.  Every interaction should be patterned after God’s mercy and love; every gesture should bring the identity of God, who is love, to bear on civilization.  The Holiness Code enumerates the many ways that God is manifested through humankind; as we strive to live it, we call others to that same relationship, with God and with one another.  As in Psalm 108, every time we bless God’s holy name, we are increasing our awareness of God’s presence, claiming that presence, that love, as essential to our lives, bringing that love to bear upon our relationship with God and with all.  We are, in other words, striving for holiness.

   Jesus revisits the Holiness Code in Matthew’s Gospel when he exhorts his listeners to Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.  To reach for perfection is to embrace a process, to strive for the holiness of God by manifesting that holiness in what we live, challenging others to holiness in the process, giving to the one who asks of us, ever generous in our relationships with others.  This also means we must love – not just our family, not just our neighbors or our fellow countrymen, but, Jesus tells us, our enemies themselves.  There is no holiness in hatred; we must love all as God loves all God’s children, allowing God’s love for us to dictate our love for other.  As Paul tells the Corinthians, we are the temple of God, and that temple is holy for the Spirit of God dwells in us.  God was thus meant to be revealed through us as we work for community, giving witness to the power of God’s love in our lives. 

   This is what Paul means when he tells each to become a fool, so as to become wise:  we are to embrace that kingdom of inversion in which the only true power is God’s power, the power of love.  If we do so, subjecting ourselves to all so that God can be present through us, then we will indeed be holy, a revelation of God’s love and mercy in the world.

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source:  Wordle

Two roads diverged... (Robert Frost)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both 

And be one traveler, long I stood 

And looked down one as far as I could 

To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

                        

Then took the other, as just as fair, 

And having perhaps the better claim, 

Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 

Though as for that the passing there 

Had worn them really about the same. 

                       

And both that morning equally lay 

In leaves no step had trodden black. 

Oh, I kept the first for another day! 

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

I doubted if I should ever come back. 

                       

I shall be telling this with a sigh 

Somewhere ages and ages hence: 

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – 

I took the one less traveled by, 

And that has made all the difference. 

--Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, 

from Mountain Interval (1920)

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Freely united to Him and to each other (C. S. Lewis)

   God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right.  Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can’t.  If a thing is free to be good it’s also free to be bad.  And free will is what had made evil possible.  Why, then, did God give them free will?  Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.  A world of automata – of creatures that worked like machines – would hardly be worth creating.  The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.  And for that they’ve got to be free.

--C. S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

Image source:  Adam and Eve, St. John’s Bible