Audio from Saturday night: https://docs.google.com/a/stpius.net/file/d/0B1r8CMMH17Y0U0xkOGtaVmRUQzBOY09La2o5ZGNLU1hZcldR/edit?usp=docslist_api
This is personal. “Alright, now it's
personal” means they are now intensely committed to something
because it is starting to have serious direct effects on them:
whether their reputation, their relationships, their livelihood, or
perhaps their very life. We don't get in-between a mama bear and her
cub because then it gets personal. When I was a kid, we had a
raccoon living in our garage one summer, and when my dad reached his
hand into that cardboard box without knowing, wow talk about
personal!
This is exactly what God is talking
about in the first reading today: He takes us personally – all of
us! But especially today, the weakest in society: the orphans, the
widows, the aliens (not meaning martians but rather foreigners). God
says if we mistreat them, things are going to get personal, “for”,
The Lord says, “I am compassionate.” God has united Himself to
us, His people, and if we mess up His Name among the nations, He will
take it personally. This should be a big wake-up call to all of us
for social justice: God's wrath flares up when He sees injustice. So
too should we have a burning desire to set things right and take calm
and prudent steps that get us closer, one day at a time, to true
peace, as newly Blessed Paul VI once said: “If
you want peace, work for justice!”
Today in another showdown between Jesus
and the religious authorities of His day, we get a glimpse into the
heart of religion. What is it all about? In many ways, a master
teacher is proven by the ability to make complex things simple
without losing the essence of them. An architect is no good if he
can't explain to me what makes a good roof: “it keeps the weather
out and doesn't fall apart.” Jesus today answers “what is
religion all about?” And even very young children can understand
this anwer: Love God, and Love your neighbor as if they were
yourself.
That's all folks! If it's that simple,
it sure makes us look silly for how often we make a poor job of it,
huh?!
Then Jesus adds an interesting phrase
at the end, and he uses the Gk. Kremetai 'hang'
“On these two commandments hang
the whole law and the prophets (i.e., the entire Jewish faith
tradition).”
Now
I'm sure you've seen, a few action movies, and in so many of them
there is a time where someone is over a big drop, and the only thing
keeping him from falling is the ledge or rope he's holding onto, or
even better the hand of another person who reached them at the last
minute. Without that grip, down they go, so long. Well, that is the
image that Jesus is using when he says “on these two commandments
hang the whole law and
the prophets.”
Love God, and Love your neighbor as
if they were yourself. And if
we don't God will take it personally. So we should take it
personally.
Our
relationship with God should be personal. It has to be more than
Sundays. We have to both give God space in the home of our heart,
and also spend time in that home with Him. God has, in fact, already
carved a home for us in the Lord's Sacred Heart. Do we visit Him by
prayer and sacrifice?
Secondly,
our love of others should be personal. Do we sacrifice ourselves for
others? There is a great almost-saint that Paul VI himself promoted,
named Pier Giorgio Frassatti, and I'd love to tell you all about him
but I don't have enough time: Fr. Bill would come shut off my
microphone! So, go to the parish website, click on the word “homily”
at the top, then click on my name. Then you can listen to another
priest's account of Pier Giorgio (especially around 8min15sec).
He's a wonderful young man of an upper class Italian family whose
love for God showed itself so clearly in love for neighbor. It was
personal for Blessed Pier Giorgio because He saw how God, in His Son
death on the cross, made it personal first. Let us make it personal,
too, and put the love of this Eucharist into practice.
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