Homily for 30th Sun OT, Year A
Fr. Albert
St. Peter Catholic Church, New Iberia
Have you ever seen Drew Brees throw a football? Or watched an artist produce a painting? Have you ever listened to an orchestra live? How often have you been amazed by some great talent or inspiring feat performed by another human being? Drew Brees just decides where he’ll put the ball, and it goes there. The best orchestras can adjust tempo and pitch in an instant following the conductor. Great artists seem to just conjure up beautiful pictures and perfect forms with casual brush strokes. They make it look easy, and they seem to enjoy it.
It’s tempting to imagine that some people are just born with super-human abilities. But it’s not true. Though it’s not as thrilling and entertaining as professional sports, there are millions of people who have incredible precision and consistency in their ordinary jobs. Pizza-makers, welders, and secretaries: people who just know exactly how to spin the dough, patch a metal plate, or type over 100 words a minute.
What all such people have in common is this: practice, training, and persistence. In other words, they have formed a habit. Human beings are creatures of habit and so much of who we are and what we become boils down to the habits we form. Indeed, our eternal fate is very much connected to our habits.
But what does this have to do with Jesus’ Great Commandments? Well, it comes down to this question: what is Love? Jesus sums up all of scripture with two little commands, both of which boil down to a single word: Love. Love God, Love Neighbor and everything will be taken care of. St. Augustine famously said “Love, and do what you will.” Even the world has picked up on this delightfully simple summary. Bumper stickers, billboards, online memes, and various slogans all tell us to just love each other – that that would solve so many of our problems.
In particular, the world loves to fuss at Catholics and other Christians about this. After all, it’s our Lord and Savior who said it best. We – so the world claims – are not very loving towards LGBT or whatever other group the media wants to focus on. Christians are often portrayed as judgmental, cold-hearted, and legalistic. To be honest, we often are those things, but this runs deeper than our shortcomings.
When the world berates us for making beautiful churches instead of giving everything to the poor, or when they challenge priests for not celebrating gay marriages, they say “Where is your love?” The best answer to that question is the question I asked before. “What is love?”
And the answer to that question, as many of you know, is not “it’s a feeling” or “following your heart.” Well, what’s the right definition? The classic definition is this “to will the good of the other.” That’s not wrong, but it leaves too much hanging out in the air. Ethereal, vague, easy to avoid because it’s not specific. What is good? How often? When? This defines love as a verb, but I think maybe we need to think about love as noun. What kind of thing is love?
Love is a virtue. It is a habit. Like musicians know how to play an instrument and most of us know how to ride a bike, lovers know how to love. It is not just a single decision. It’s not just a feeling. It’ is a way of existing. Like all real habits, real love is deeply embedded in how a lover lives. Habits, virtues become second nature to us. So, when Jesus says to love God and love our neighbor, it’s not a single decision or even several decisions. It’s is a call to become a certain kind of person. To form a second-nature. In this case, it is a call to form a super-nature.
Keep in mind the fact that this same man, Jesus, told us to love our enemies. He told us that love means to lay down your life for your friend. He told us to love the way he loves, and he loved by dying for us, dying for sinners, dying because he loved the very people who killed Him for telling the Truth. It’s just being nice, Jesus he is saying that we need to make a habit out of being willing to die for love of others. Most of the time, that death is metaphorical, but don’t forget that the Church’s heroes are those who literally died for love – the Martyrs.
How can anyone make a habit out of loving their enemy? Playing an instrument or learning to type seem plausible and natural. Loving your enemy doesn’t come naturally. Heck, even loving your friends and family is hard – selfishness runs deep in all of us. How can we form such a habit? You can’t. Unlike music or craftsmanship, the habit of Love is supernatural. We sometimes call it “charity;” It’s more than human affection. It is a gift like Faith and Hope. That’s why the collect – the opening prayer – for this Mass begs God to “increase our faith, hope, and charity and make us love what [God] commands.”
But, once you’ve been given the gift – in Baptism and Confirmation – you do have to use it. Habits don’t stay habits unless we use them. Thus, we have the Greatest Commandment. Not one, but two commandments. And it even tells us how to love. The world likes the second command, love thy neighbor, but that one is second for a reason. Your neighbor is made in the image of God. If you do not know God, if you do not love God, then you will eventually forget how to love his image in others. Over time, love of neighbor without the love of God becomes corrupt, perverse, and confused to the point that we think killing someone is the best way to love them. No, start with first things first. Love God with your heart, soul, and mind.
Your heart is symbolic for your will. Love God by making a conscious, deliberate choice to worship Him at Mass. By making a conscious, deliberate choice to pray. By making a conscious, deliberate choice to do the right thing even when it seems like no one gets hurt.
Your soul represents your life. Give your life to God by being willing to follow his lead in choosing a vocation or career. Give your soul to God in prayer, by preferring to die rather than sin against him.
Your mind is your ability to think. Get to know about God and His Church. Learn about Scripture and Tradition. Lots of people are willing to ask questions about the faith. They will say that something doesn’t quite make sense or they don’t understand. That’s fine, but so many stop there. Go look for the answer. Keep digging and strive to not just memorize some part of the faith, but to genuinely understand how it connects to the rest of what we believe.
Still, none of that can be separated from love of neighbor. God’s image is in them and God commands us to love our neighbor, so following the first requires the second. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and all the works of mercy. Jesus especially emphasized loving those who are most vulnerable because he died for us: sinners vulnerable to Satan and to eternal death. We can’t redeem souls, but we the closest we can get is to care for the poor; for orphans, widows, and immigrants – those who are most likely to have no one to help them.
We can’t do these things just once, but repeatedly. They must become a habit. The good news is that habits become easier. Eventually, they even become enjoyable. So yeah “Love is all you need.” Start with the inconvenient choice of daily prayer, weekly mass, monthly confession. Start with the unnatural choice to love an irritating neighbor. Do it again… and again… again. Love, and do what you will. Love enough, and Love is all you will ever do.
