What Really Matters – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; November 3, 2024

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. That is the first and greatest commandment. (cf. Mt 22:38)

We are to love God who created us and who sustains us in existence at every moment. We are to love God who has endowed us with life, knowledge, and love. We are to love God who has revealed himself to us through his Son, Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us from sin and bestowed upon us the life of grace in the Holy Spirit, bringing to us every spiritual blessing in the heavens. (cf. Eph 1:3)

We are to love the one God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the holy and glorious and inseparable Trinity. We are to love God, the Father, and when we love God the Father, we love the Son and the Holy Spirit; we are to love God the Son, and when we love God the Son, we love the Father and the Holy Spirit; we are to love God the Holy Spirit, and when we love the Holy Spirit, we love the Father and the Son. We love the three in one with one single love, just as they are one only God.

With this same love, we are to love the man Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God, the second person of the blessed Trinity, who has brought God near to us and through whom we draw near to God. We love the man, Jesus Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father and we love him dwelling in our midst in the Holy Eucharist; we love him abiding in our hearts in the Holy Spirit; we love him in all the mysteries of his life, death, and resurrection, upon which we meditate when we pray the rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who more than any other creature has loved God above all things.

We are to love God with all our heart and soul, in which is found the personal synthesis of our mind and will, our memory, imagination, and the depth of our feeling. We are to love him with all our mind, submitting our mind to his word in faith; we are to love him with all our strength, placing all the resources of our mind and body at his service, yielding ourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and our members to God as instruments of righteousness. (Rm 6:13)

We are to love him who has first loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. (1 Jn 4:10) Jesus himself has loved us with his infinite divine love; he has loved us with the spiritual love, freely given, of his human will; he has loved us with all the rich warmth of his human heart, the sacred Heart, which is the embodiment, expression, and symbol of divine love.

Receiving his love, we are to return love for love. In the end, that is all he asks of us. He has given us his Heart and wants us to give him our hearts, which he will fashion to be like his. As he was dying on the Cross he cried out, I thirst. (Jn 19:28) He thirsts for our love. Then he allowed his side to be pierced with a lance and from his side came forth a fountain of blood and water, that reaches us through the sacraments, which give to us to drink from his Holy Spirit, to quench our thirst for life and love. (cf. Jn 19:34)

When we receive the love of Christ, the Holy Spirit, works in our heart refashioning it according to the pattern of the Heart of Jesus; Jesus himself gives to us the sentiments of his own Heart; then we are able to love one another as Christ has loved us. (cf. Jn 13:34)

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The great 20^th century theologian, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange said, “The great sign of the love of God is precisely love of one’s neighbor.” (Three Ages of the Interior Life, Vol I, Ch 8) St. John, after telling us that God first loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins adds, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 Jn 4:11)

To love our neighbor as ourselves we must first of all desire for him what we should desire for ourselves: that he might join us in the love of Christ and with us attain eternal life in God.

On one occasion a certain scholar of the law asked Jesus, Who is my neighbor? (Lk 10:29) Jesus responded by giving us the parable of the Good Samaritan. (cf. Lk 10:30-37) The upshot, we could say, is that no one is excluded, we cannot draw a line and say, “That man is not my neighbor, therefore I have no obligation to love him.” Even more, the man in need of my help, right here and right now, is my neighbor.

The scholar of the law asked the question with the intent of excluding unwanted people, like the Samaritans. We could, however, ask the same question from a different perspective. Granted that no one is excluded, we are physically limited and incapable of reaching out to absolutely everyone. Even in the matter of prayer, it would be impossible for any of us to pray, by name, for every single human being alive today, yet God knows them all by name and none of them is forgotten.

We are confronted with these physical and mental limits in a special way in our information age. In the time of the Apostles knowledge of people and events in other places was either by way of one’s own travels, by word of mouth, or among the more educated by reading books, not newspapers. In our own time we are so inundated with news and information that we could easily become overwhelmed, numb, and desensitized in face of such limitless need.

We need to realize that while in principle love of neighbor excludes no one, in practice we must learn what St. Thomas Aquinas calls “the order of charity.” (cf. Summa Theologiae 26). That means that love reaches out first to nearer neighbors, those whom God has in a particular way put in our life, along our path. In that sense, charity truly does begin at home, though it certainly must not stop there either. Still, if we cannot get family life right, we will not be able to get anything else right either.

What would we say of a man who had the means, who was generous in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, but left his own children starving and in rags? Likewise, what would we say of a man who was kind, patient, and gentle with strangers, but was like a raging lion in his own house, with his wife and children? St. Paul writes: If any does not provide for his own, and specially his close family, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Tim 5:8)

Then there is also our Church family. St. Paul writes: As we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who belong to the household of faith. (Gal 6:10)

Take note that the Church is not just hierarchical, under the Pope, but it is also territorial. What I mean is that traditionally it has been divided into dioceses and parishes, which have been geographically defined and limited. There is a teaching here: our neighbor is first of all someone who is near us physically. It used to be that even extended families lived close together physically, as Jesus’ own kin lived in Nazareth. The Good Samaritan came across someone lying half-dead right there in his path. We need to recognize and address the needs that are there in front of us, where we live.

That means, in our contemporary world of cyber space we must take care that any “virtual community” takes second place to physical community. Again, it is very significant that we cannot receive holy communion in an online Mass. Nor can we receive any other sacrament online. Canon law specifically prohibits confession by telephone.

Next, I would suggest that the extensions of love on the physical plane (as compared to prayer) should reach out beyond our physical “neighborhood” first of all by way of personal connection, through our family, or through persons we have met and become involved with in various ways during the course of our own pilgrimage in this passing world. Love reaches out and welcomes the “stranger,” not so much the stranger 1,000 miles away, but the one who has in some way crossed our path. I would also suggest then that “personal connection” should guide our charitable donations as well, at least in the sense that we give to the causes that through our own experience of life more readily draw our compassion.

In prayer, however, our love can and should reach out more broadly. Prayer knows no geographic boundaries. Indeed, prayer is not confined to this world, in prayer we are united also to the angels and saints in heaven. In prayer we can reach out to the souls in purgatory, bringing them refreshment, a great act of charity. In prayer we find ourselves in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the faith throughout the world. (cf. 1 Pe 5:9)

No one is excluded. Jesus commands us even to love our enemies. (cf. Mt 5:44) There are those who are physically near to us and yet hostile to us, whom we must bear with patiently, forgiving them so far as possible, treating them with the basics of human decency and courtesy, never giving way to hatred in the heart.

St. Paul writes: Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. Beloved never avenge yourself, but leave it to the wrath of God … if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him to drink … do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rm 12:17-18.20,21)

It is important to highlight the words “if possible.” Jesus at times hid himself from those who were seeking his life and gave an example to his disciples that it is allowable to hide from those who persecute us or are hostile to us; so in various ways we can seek to protect ourselves and those under our care from those who seek to harm us.

Here again, prayer has no boundaries. Jesus said, Pray for those who persecute you. (Mt 6:44) That does not mean you must pray that their persecution succeed, but neither is praying that the persecution cease the same as praying for the persecutor. Rather, to pray for the one who persecutes us is to include that person in the “our” of the “Our Father.” It means sincerely desiring before God that the person in question sanctifies God’s name in his own heart, that God’s kingdom might reign in his heart as in ours, that he might learn to do God’s will, receive from God what he needs for his life (his daily bread), be forgiven as he forgives, protected from temptation, delivered from evil, and so attain his eternal salvation.

Blessed Christian de Chergé one of the Algerian martyrs, kidnapped and beheaded by Islamic terrorists in 1996, left a spiritual testament in anticipation of the event. The last words, directed to his killers, were, “May we meet again as happy thieves in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both.”  

In the end, what matters is that we make the most of the time that has been given to us to love God and love our neighbor.