October 23, 2014
The following is a homily on the Scripture readings for Oct. 26.
It’s on YouTube. It’s called “A Wedding Surprise,” a video that went viral, seen by over 33,000,000 people. It’s a wedding in Ireland – Chris and Leah O’Kane are getting married. It begins with voices from Sonlight Ministries finishing a song. We see one girl lean over and whisper to her fellow singer. Then Father Ray Kelley get up and solos a song called “Hallelulia,” adapting the lyrics to Chris and Leah. When Father finishes, the whole congregation stands and applauds. One of the YouTube comments, “I’m 67 and have been to many weddings, but this is the most beautiful one I’ve seen.”
Although fewer people marry today, and fewer still marry in the Church, people and our culture still see weddings as the most precious instances of love. Perhaps at a time of widespread marital failure, we applaud more those who dare to marry, such a bold statement of commitment it has become. If we use the word “love,” we relate it most on occasions like this: flowers, gowns, tuxedoes, receptions and a young couple fully in love.
But the joke goes: What happens after the honeymoon. We had Jackie Gleason in the 1950s embodying a less elegant form of love in the Honeymooners: “One of these days, Alice, pow, right in the kisser.” And Carroll O’Connor channeled Archie Bunker in the 1980s playing a husband that his wife, Edythe, just has to endure. We can so easily see romantic love at the wedding; where is it in daily life?
The Scriptures today are challenging us to link ideas of love even more fundamental than romantic love. Jesus, who has been questioned left and right by his religious opponents, now receives a question that was widely discussed in his time. “What is the greatest commandment?” Jesus answers, to the satisfaction of everyone, but he nuances his response. Loving God with all one’s heart, soul and strength – that is the greatest. But then he sneaks in his twist: “The second one is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
How easy for us to separate realms. In one area we have love of God, with all the sacraments and Scriptures, with all our prayers and piety. Most of this happens for us Catholics in Church, with a smaller trickle of God-love seeping into our week. There can be a huge gap between Sunday morning and all the other days. But in another realm we have the loves of our lives, primarily family and friends, and occasional acts of charity in response to crises and emergencies. As November comes, our hearts soften to the poor and homeless; we will give them gloves, coats and turkeys, which we call “charity.”
But Jesus is saying there are no separate realms. Love of God and love of all humankind are inherently woven together. We can’t be saying pious prayers to God while ignoring the suffering right in front of our noses. And when we reach out to others in love, we are also loving God with heart, soul, mind and strength. Perhaps some people do not even know that, when they stretch themselves in care to others, they are loving God as well.
Yet, how could it be otherwise? To love God has to mean we love the ones God loves. And the bedrock of our faith in Jesus Christ is that God loves everyone: in our very being, in our struggles and growth, and in the destiny God has invited everyone to attain. We cannot love God without also loving God’s beloved. This is clear in the first reading, from the Hebrew Scriptures, where God tells the Jews that obedience to him means care for all, especially those likely to be exploited. “I am compassionate; I will hear their cry.”
So it’s great that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie finally got married, and George Clooney followed soon after. And we’ll surely get invitations to weddings of relatives and friends. We enjoy these; weddings make us happy. But we are only seeing a part of the mystery, a hint of the reality: that God is Absolute Love, and we know this God only by loving absolutely in return as God shows us in Jesus.