“What Does Love Look Like?” by Rev.
Paul Berghout
Monday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 479
Piety
Be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ. Be imitators of God,
as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed himself
over for us as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma. Ephesians 4:32-5:2
Blessed the man who follows not the
counsel of the wicked Nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company
of the insolent, But delights in the law of the LORD and meditates on his law
day and night. Psalm
1:1-2
Jesus was teaching in a synagogue on
the sabbath. And a woman was there who for eighteen years had been crippled by
a spirit; she was bent over, completely incapable of standing erect. When Jesus
saw her, he called to her and said, “Woman, you are set free of your
infirmity.” He laid his hands on her, and she at once stood up straight and
glorified God.” Luke
13:10-13
Study
It is the story of the courtship of
Moses Mendelssohn, the grandfather of the great German composer Felix
Mendelssohn.
Moses Mendelssohn was a small man with
a malformed, humped back. One day he visited a merchant in Hamburg who had a
lovely daughter. Though Mendelssohn admired her greatly, she avoided him,
seemingly afraid of his grotesque hump.
On the last day of his visit, he went
to tell her good-bye. Her face seemed to beam with beauty, but she cast her
eyes to the floor when he entered. Mendelssohn’s heart ached in love with her.
After some small talk, he slowly drew to the subject that filled his mind. “Do
you believe that marriages are made in Heaven?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied the young woman. “And
do you?”
“Of course,” Mendelssohn answered. “I
believe that at the birth of each child, the Lord says, ‘That boy shall marry
that girl.’ But in my case, the Lord also added, `But alas, his wife will have
a terrible hump.’
“At that moment, I called out, ‘Oh
Lord, that would be a tragedy for her. Please give me the humped back and let
her be beautiful.’”
The story goes that the young woman
was so moved by these words that she reached for Mendelssohn’s hand and later
became his loving and faithful wife.
Isn’t that a beautiful story? Hold on
to it. We’ll come back to it in a few moments.
Which of God’s laws is greatest? We
heard in our Gospel reading Sunday that set the stage for our week of lessons. The answer isn’t as straightforward as we
might prefer.
WHEN WE ASK FOR ONE COMMANDMENT, JESUS
GIVES US TWO. The questioning student did not ask for a second-place
commandment. He only wanted to know what the number one, greatest single
commandment. However, Jesus gave two
commandments instead because the whole law and the prophets depend on two
commandments, not one. These are, namely,
that we love God with our entire being and our neighbor as ourselves.
If you are keeping the first without
keeping the second, you’re not maintaining the first. If X is more important
than Y, we’ll treat Y as something to get around to sooner or later, once X is
complete.
Our focus, he says, must be thoroughly
divine and no less entirely humanitarian. (source: ANDREW WILSON Two
Commandments for the Price of One).
A pious Catholic maxim is, “At all
times, have a special love for your companions, and this mutual love must come
from God and tend to God.”
However, your neighbor is anybody. For
example, in Sunday’s first reading, we heard that you should not oppress an
alien, for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. Oppressing a
foreigner means economic oppression, but the root meaning is forced labor. Nevertheless,
when the undocumented (so-called “illegal”) alien cries out to me, I will hear
him, says God, for I am compassionate. This common biblical theme implies that
God has his ear particularly cocked for the plea of those without resources and
recourses. God is the guardian and avenger of those who lack social protection,
which includes the unborn.
We see the face of God in others,
especially in the faces of undocumented, law-abiding people who have been
working and paying taxes for decades yet are not allowed to become citizens. Of
course, we have the right to protect our national borders and manage
immigration in a just way, but one that works.
The second commandment also checks
fanaticism because you can’t say “I love God” and kill non-believers of your
religion. It is not necessary to like everyone, but only to accept them. Jesus
bases the second law on the other person’s relation to God. It is unconditional
love, not unqualified approval.
The bonus is that if you keep one and
two, you get three because Love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self all grow
together and sustain one another. If one
is absent or neglected, the other two can suffer.
However, it’s not just about the self-understanding
that comes with a relationship with God.
That can remain too subjective, individualistic, and inward-focused.
They neglect the third essential component to Christian spirituality: love of
and service to other people, a spirituality of action to serve the eternal
benefit and eternal life of others, and their material well-being as a life
goal.
Regarding love of one’s self- that is
implied in the second: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
We hear Paul tell the Ephesians (5:28):
“A husband who loves his wife loves himself.” Love of self here is a given—not
a command per se.
St. Paul continues by writing to them:
“After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their
body, just as Christ does the church.” St. Catherine of Sienna offers the same
insight when she says that we love other people with the same love we see when others
– including ourselves -- love us. If I
do not accept myself as I am, it will show resentment and conflict with others
as projections of our interior battles.
However, the phrase “Need love” is
always born of emptiness. Only through a life a prayer can that emptiness be
filled daily.
Action
What does love look like? 1 John 4:9
“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into
the world that we might live through him…”
I said we’d return to that beautiful
story from our beginning -- the story of Moses Mendelssohn, the small man with
the large hump on his back. Remember he told the girl he loved, I believe that
at each child's birth, the Lord says, that boy shall marry that girl. But in my
case, the Lord also added, his wife will have a terrible hump. Please give me
the humped back and let her be beautiful.
What does love look like? It’s like a
man taking on a hump on his back so that his wife can be straight and
beautiful.
But instead of a hump, let us say, as
we think of the message of the Gospel, it’s like a man who takes a cross upon
His shoulder so that you and I might be free from the power of sin and death
and solely because of God’s love for us. Amen.
