Dominca in Quinquagesima
Latin Mass 2020 • Sermon • Submitted
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LESSON: Christ-like Love Is More Than a Feeling
LESSON: Christ-like Love Is More Than a Feeling
We know from Christ's teaching that the meaning of life can be summed up in one word: love.
We were created to be loved and to love. Without that, our lives burn out little by little, like a candle that can't get enough air.
Pope St. John Paul II repeated this theme over and over again. He wrote in his first Encyclical:
"Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it" (Redemptor Hominis, #10).
We know that. We have all memorized the two Great Commandments: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself.
We can say the words. But what is the meaning behind those words, especially the word "love"?
St Paul tries to answer that question in this famous chapter from his First Letter to the Corinthians.
He reminds us that love is the meaning of life, the "highest gift" and the "greatest" of virtues.
Then he gives a description of what love really is.
He lists fourteen great characteristics of Christ-like love, true love.
These describe both how Christ loves us, and how we are called to love in return.
What is most striking about this description is how different it is from the idea of love that's popular in today's culture.
For the world we live in, love is a passive thing, a feeling that sweeps you off your feet and takes control of your life.
For St Paul, and for Christ, and for us, love is not passive at all; and it is certainly not just a feeling; love is active self-giving: patience, kindness, forgiveness, courage...
Sometimes nice feelings go along with this authentic love, but they are unessential accessories.
We know this is the case because the pinnacle of love - Christ giving his life out of love on the cross - had nothing to do with nice feelings.
Christ-like love, real love, the kind of love that lasts and gives meaning to life, is not a passive feeling; it is active self-giving.
It is not self-centred, but other-centred.
St. Teresa of Calcutta put it like this, "I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love."
ILLUSTRATION: Overcoming the Consumerist Model
ILLUSTRATION: Overcoming the Consumerist Model
Unfortunately, our society is constantly conditioning us to associate love and happiness with feelings. It's a consumer society, where feelings rule.
Why? Because advertisers can manipulate feelings - with the right image and music, they can make us feel good about a product even if we don't need it.
So, if we are conditioned to make decisions based mostly on feelings, advertisers can convince us to buy a product just by stirring up the right feelings.
And since feelings by their nature are always changing, like the weather, as soon as we get tired of one product, a smart advertiser can make us feel good about another one.
But if we give in to this model of life, soon everything becomes a product, disposable when it no longer gives us nice feelings - religion, marriage, truth, even children.
St Paul invites us to build on a firmer, deeper foundation, that of Christian, Christ-like love.
Think of a mother taking care of her sick child.
She stays up all night, she watches, she worries, she cleans and feeds and comforts. She exhausts herself.
How does she feel in the midst of all that? She feels rotten. And yet, she wouldn't have it any other way.
Think of soldiers who love their country.
Do they feel good when they're on a forced march through sleet and snow and enemy fire, night after night?
Do they feel comfortable when they have to stay on duty for twelve hours in a sandy foxhole under the desert sun?
Feelings have nothing to do with it.
Human maturity comes when we learn to live on a deeper level when we learn to love.
Love means giving ourselves to others, and in the first place to God, regardless of feelings; it means being faithful to what is true and right, no matter how we feel.
APPLICATION: Tending the Seed of Grace
APPLICATION: Tending the Seed of Grace
We all would like to live that way, loving Christ and our neighbour as Christ has loved us, no matter how we feel.
But it seems impossible.
The devil, the society around us, and the tendencies within us draw us constantly towards selfishness.
Yet, would Christ have called us to something impossible?
He has planted his grace in our souls - he wants us to learn to love as he loves, and his grace makes it possible.
All we need to do is tend that seed of grace, like good gardeners, and he will take care of the rest.
We all know how to nourish that seed, how to create the conditions in which it can grow into a mature Christian personality.
We water it every day by healthy, heartfelt prayer.
We feed it with the fertilizer and sunlight of the Eucharist.
We keep pulling up the weeds that try to stifle it by frequent confession.
We prune it and support it with concrete acts of self-denial and service to others, especially when we don't feel like it.
If we look at our lives honestly and see that we are not growing in our capacity to love as Christ loves, it's not because Christ isn't doing his part, it's because we are not doing our part.
One, two, or all four of those simple tasks are being neglected.
As we continue with this Mass, let's ask Christ to renew his gift of grace in our souls, to make it grow, to make it thrive.
Let's ask him to show each one of us what we need to do to make that grace grow to fruition so that we can experience the happiness, the wisdom, and the fruitfulness he so eagerly wants to give us.