One commandment, many implications: 30th Sunday

Do we really love God? How do we know? Just because we say we do? Just because we feel we do? Just because we think we do?

What is the difference between really loving God and loving our idea of God, which will always be imperfect? We can be praying for hours to the convenient fabrication of our imagination and making us feel like we have indeed loved God deeply.

That seldom happens with people of flesh and blood. When we love Peter and want Peter to be what Peter is probably not, reality bites back. Peter snaps at our presumptions or we simply get disappointed when we find out that Peter does not act as our image of Peter is supposed to act. We perceive with our senses the reality of Peter. The real Peter would always contrast with the Peter of our fantasy.

Relationships are largely about learning to make our images of people realistic. Sometimes it will happen through pleasant surprises. At times, through gentle reminders and other times, through bitter disappointments.

But God, how we do contrast our idea of God with the real God?

Our neighbour is the answer. We only love God as much as we love our neighbour. In fact, it may happen that we only really love God as much as we love our worst enemy.

Loving our neighbor is thus not a second commandment after the first, but the same commandment, even more, the realistic side of the first commandment. After all, can I say I love God if I do not love the people He loves?

Love cannot be forced. If we try to force ourselves to love we may end up acting as if we loved them, but that would not be a very honest performance. We would become sheer hypocrites.

Love is more than a duty. It is a commandment, because commandments are conditions for life. “Choose life, and you shall live.” That is a conditional sentence. If you love life, you will live.

Love is the condition for a truly human life. Without receiving it, we don’t have dignity; without giving it, we don’t have purpose.

You are gods! 5th Friday of Lent

“Every man who knocks at the door of a brothel is looking for God,” G. K. Chesterton said. True. But I would add, every one of those wants to be God. Jesus himself quoted the Scriptures, “Is it not written in your Law: ‘I said, you are gods?’ “

The desire to be gods must be a deep one, because the serpent, the most astute of the animals, knew it was man’s soft spot. The one lie with which the serpent could tempt Adam and Eve out of the garden was this : “If you eat…, you will be as gods.”

Like all desires that God put in the human heart, the desire to want to be like God is a good one. What is wrong is the use of strategies that fail to achieve that end. We call those bad strategies sin.

The sin of Adam was to want to be god without God. Jesus shows the right strategy. No man can be god apart from God. Not even the Son can be God apart from the Father.

Who can fail to notice the obsession the gospel of John has for the verbs “abide”, “dwell” and “remain”. That concept opens the key to the mission of Jesus. He shows us how to remain in God, and in so doing, he heals the rupture Adam caused. Jesus abided in the Father and the Father in Him. When His word abides in men… then and only then, can men fulfil the age-old dream of becoming gods in God.