(Listen to this homily here).
We continue this morning through St. John’s eloquent
treatise on love in his first letter.
Yesterday we heard that God loves us first, today we see that love
involves both obedience and our neighbor: “In
this way we know that we love the children of God when
we love God and obey his commandments.” John also writes something very crucial: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but
hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother
whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not
seen.”
In
the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus announces his role in an astounding
way. He was at the synagogue in
Nazareth, opened the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and proclaimed, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty
to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to
let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable
to the Lord.” Imagine
the crowd’s eyes which “looked intently
on him” and then hearing Jesus declare, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
What
is powerful to me is that Jesus’ quotation focuses almost exclusively on loving
our neighbor—glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, recovery of sight
to the blind, freeing the oppressor.
Today
Pope Francis gives us a great model and witness of loving God and our
neighbor. One of the results is
that he brought more unity to the Catholic Church in our country. Throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and
early 2000s I experienced a divide between “the Catholics of faith, prayer and
sacraments” and “the Catholics of social justice and service.”
St.
John, Pope Francis and most especially Jesus show that such a division can
never occur—if we don’t love our neighbor we can’t love God. May we love both today as we continue
our Christmas celebration.
No comments:
Post a Comment