“Conquered by Faith” by Beth DeCristofaro
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 … For
the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments
are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the
victory that conquers the world is our faith. (1 John 4:20,
5:3-4)
(Jesus) stood up to read and was handed a
scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage
where it was written: 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. (Luke
4:16-19)
Piety
Study
In the notes to the Gospel, we read, “Our
love is grounded in the confession of Jesus as the Son of God and the example
of God’s love for us. The Christian life is founded on the knowledge of God as
love and on his continuing presence that relieves us from fear of judgment
(1 Jn 4:16–18). What Christ is gives us confidence, even as we live and
love in this world. Yet Christian love is not abstract but lived in the
concrete manner of love for one another.”[i]
Jesus knows this isn’t an easy concept to grasp nor to live. In yesterday’s Gospel, the disciples did not
grasp Jesus’ presence nor power over the storm threatening to swamp them. The Gospel states They had not understood
the incident of the loaves. On the contrary, their hearts were hardened. (Mark
6:52)
And yet, for sure, Jesus’ disciples were
law-abiding, commandment-following men, faithful to the Law of Moses. What they
had trouble with, and many of us have difficulty with today, is that Jesus
wants us to follow the law written upon our hearts, his presence fulfilled by
our thoughts, desires, and actions. This
law, as Jesus said, is the greatest: “You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and
with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater
than these. (Mark 12:30-31)
Again and again, we hear that our hearts must be softened so that we carry and
convey, in graced confidence, the love of God into our world.
With hearts softened in God-presence, we will
not only not want to kill but will seek to be kind. We will not covet what belongs to others
because we will be contented in our relationship with Jesus. We will be suffused with truth instead of the
need to lie about others. Honoring our
parents or indeed, others will be a privilege on our part. And it will be a joy to keep holy the Sabbath,
keeping God always before our eyes, within the hand extended to others,
joyfully keeping company in our “concrete manner of love for one another.”
Action
Jesus’ reading for Isaiah tells us clearly
how to love him by loving those most in need of his (and our) love. Which of these people do I have the most
trouble loving? Those blind to the needs
of others? Those oppressed by poverty
and unemployment standing on the street with a sign? Those tyrannized by their own need for power
and prestige who dominate others? The
list may be long indeed, but the inexhaustible power of God is there for us to
learn first not to hate and then, indeed, to love. I ask for God to soften my heart.
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