Imagine for a moment that, coming
home tonight, you’re stopped in your driveway by a neighbor from down the
street. The neighbor approaches you and
says something like this:
“Good evening. Got a question for you. I see you going to Church on the weekend, and
sometimes during the week, and by the way you’re dressed, maybe even
tonight. And you know, I’m not a big
believer in religion and those things, but I was wondering – how can I know
that God loves me?”
How would you answer that?
That’s the question that came to
mind as I was thinking on and meditating on tonight’s topic – the Sacred Heart
and the love of God. Now that could mean
God’s love for us, or it could mean our love of God. Sisters and brothers, I would propose that it
means both. For before we can
even begin to think about loving God, I think we have to come to know, and experience,
and trust God’s love for us. I have to
know and trust – first - that God loves me.
And I do trust that. You might say “I have come to know and
believe in the love God has for me.”
How, you ask? Well it starts I think with the experience of
being loved - by anyone – first of all
by our parents.
It also comes from the experience of
being loved by good people of faith, by the Christian community. Most of all, it is God’s revelation, God’s
communication to us. God wants us to
know that He loves us, and God reveals His love to us in many ways.
His
revelation comes through scripture – there are scores of passages from both the
Old and New Testament that speak of God’s love for us, His children.
And God lets us know He loves us by
giving us great consolation – great joy and peace in our hearts. Oh, not all the time, mind you. As we progress on the spiritual journey, it’s
not at all unusual for the Lord to withhold this consolation for a time,
perhaps as a test of our faith and our faithfulness – “will she remain faithful
even when she doesn’t feel my love?” one can imagine Him asking. Mother Teresa felt no consolation, nothing,
felt no presence of the Lord, for more than thirty years – But through that she
persevered and we know the wonderful fruit borne of her faithfulness and
perseverance through those many years of darkness.
And of course, the ultimate
revelation of God’s love came through the gift of His Son, Our Blessed Lord,
whose Sacred Heart we celebrate and revere especially during these nine
days. Whose Sacred Heart is the living,
beating, suffering symbol of His
amazing love for us. Whom the Father
sent in the fullness of time, Who was crucified, died and rose again for the
forgiveness of our sins. Who said to His
disciples “What greater love is there than to lay down one’s life for one’s
friends?”
But ultimately, I would tell the
neighbor, that to know that God loves me is a gift – it is the gift of
faith. In fact, I would say that it’s a
pretty darn good definition of faith – to know and believe that God loves me.
And there is only one adequate response
to the wide-eyed realization that God really does love me – and that is for me
to love Him back. To give my life over
to Him, each and every day. To surrender
to Him and His will in my life. To spend
time with Him each day in prayer, to receive Him into me, His Body, Blood, Soul
and Divinity in Holy Eucharist, to frequent the Sacrament of Reconciliation when
I’ve failed Him, and to worship and adore Him as we are doing here tonight.
Now once we fathom His love for us,
and our love for Him grows, it wells up and overflows in us – we can’t help,
then, but to love others with this same love.
His love becomes a wellspring of love bubbling up and overflowing.
And the opposite is true, too, and instructive
– if we are finding ourselves not loving, not forgiving, not compassionate,
not loving as He loves, and if we’re honest we sometimes do, it pays, I think,
to spend time examining ourselves – have I forgotten just how much He loves me? Why do I not love Him with that same passion? And what do I need to do differently to
re-ignite the flames of what must be the foremost love relationship in my life –
God and me?
Brothers and sisters, I suspect that
someone here tonight needs desperately to know and feel God’s love. I’d ask that we pray while adoring Our
Blessed Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar that He will reveal to him
or her or them His immeasurable, unconditional, exquisite love and let it flow
into their soul with great joy and consolation.
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