I had to ask my Pastor, Father Leonard Klein, if I could post his Sunday sermon again. As usual, it was thought-provoking, illuminating and timely! I hope you will read it.
13 May 2012
There are few things more basic to humanity than the
desire to love and to be loved, and there are few things about which there is
more confusion.
Love in our era has been defined almost exclusively in
terms of emotion – something we feel, something we “fall into,” almost as if it
were an accident. Thus follows the
confusion about marriage into which our society has fallen.
“What is
marriage?” is the question that is not being asked by those who want to change
the definition. Is it merely a way of
signaling our social approval of committed love between any ordering of two (or
more) people? Or does it have a deep
meaning related to the simple fact that there is only one basic biological
function that requires two people? And
that they have to be of opposite sexes?
Marriage exists in human culture to bind men and women together to rear
the children produced by their sexual interaction.
The
Church understands, along with most cultures until very recent times, that it is
not just loving feelings that constitute marriage.
Marriage is a covenant, ordained by God,
necessary for the continuation of the human project. If marriage is based only on affection, it
ends when the feelings change. But that
is not what Catholics believe. Nor is it
what most human societies have believed throughout history. Marriage was, after all, not invented; it is
a reality of the natural law that humanity has with much difficulty and
meandering discovered. It was not
created by the state and cannot be changed by the state.
For us,
marriage is not just a contract, or a right or a certification of how we feel:
it is a Sacrament, a state of life to which the promise of God’s grace is
attached. To get a sense of how radical
a claim this is, remember that monastic vows and the religious life are not
named a sacrament.
When a
priest or deacon conducts the pre-marital inquiry to see whether a couple is
free to marry, he does not inquire into their feelings. We may well talk about feelings and their
love and their relationship. Pre-Cana
instruction will address such matters.
And I assume that they have come to inquire about marriage because they
love each other in the romantic and emotional sense. But in the formal inquiry, I will ask them
whether they accept the values of permanence, fidelity, total commitment, and
openness to children. Their marriage is
constituted by their free acceptance of those values.
I am not
trying to measure the degree of their affection or see into their hearts – I
cannot – but to ascertain their understanding, their commitment and their
freedom. Their love, you see, is real
insofar as they affirm and understand the meaning and values of authentic
marriage: permanence, fidelity, total commitment, and openness to
children. These truths are against no
one and permit hostility to no one. The
truth about marriage is not a declaration of war; it is a declaration of what
is. [And for further reflection on these
questions I commend to you Bishop Malooly’s column in the new Dialog.]
Now, I
have pointed out these basic teachings about marriage, not merely because of
certain rumblings in the news over this past week, but because of the second
reading and the Gospel, and because it’s Mother’s Day and because May is
specially dedicated to devotion to the Blessed Virgin. On all these counts this a good day to think
about what love is really is.
Listen to
what Jesus says:
“If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father’s commandments
and remain in his love."
"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one's life for one's friends.”
There’s not a lot about feelings in this, is there? It’s not that feelings and romance, emotion
and sensitivity, are not important, especially in marriage. They surely are. But love cannot be reduced to feelings, as
our culture does because it has no other avenues to understanding what is real
and good and true. People have lost
confidence in the notion of truth, and in the relativism that follows only
feelings seem real.
But love is not just feelings. It has shape and content, just as marriage
has a shape, a content and a purpose that transcends the couple.
Love involves keeping Christ’s commandments. And did not your mother’s love involve some
commandments? When I went off to
college, my mother, sturdy farm woman that she was, told me not to let myself
go soft. Almost fifty years later, I’m
still trying to obey her.
And did not your mother’s love have form and
content? It is important that you knew
that she had loving feelings toward you.
But if those feelings had not been accompanied by hard work, care,
sacrifice, discipline and all sorts of activity, you might remember her with
sentimental affection but shake your head over her incompetence, loving her in
spite of it. [My eldest son smiled at me at this point]
Christ likewise expects us to show our love by keeping
his commandments, and they are numerous.
“God is love” says First John in one of the best known lines of
Scripture, but the Father’s love and the Son’s love are manifested very much in
commandments and instruction. We are to
obey the Ten Commandments, even when it’s hard.
We are to go further and follow the example of Christ in active works of
love for others. We are commanded to
pray, to celebrate the sacraments. We
are commanded to believe, to rejoice and to love.
Ultimately, the love Christ commands is sacrificial. It is defined by his own sacrifice on the
cross.
Again the example of our mothers can be helpful. They did sacrifice a lot for us. And in that their joy was made full, as
Christ promises. We do not regret the
love and labor we pour into our children.
And the example of the Blessed Mother applies all the
more – her heart was pierced by the sacrifice of her Son. Not only was she bereft, as far too many
mothers are who have seen their children die.
She bore him to this purpose and suffered with him, as he suffered for
us. And yet she too shared the joy of
the resurrection, and we find her with the disciples in Jerusalem in the
opening chapter of Acts. She finished
her life in the home of the apostle John as Christ asked on the cross and as is
depicted in the last window on my left, faithful to the end.
Love is shaped by obedience and by service. It is a Christ-like outpouring for the other
in which we discover, often to our great surprise, our true joy.
That obedience is not always easy. Defending the simple truth about marriage is
not easy and evokes misunderstanding and even hatred. But more generally, the power of sin holds us
back from living for the other, from living for the truth, from taking risks
demanded by our faith.
Our mothers at their best gave us a model of what it
means to live lives of sacrificial love.
And the Blessed Mother surely did.
And Christ did preeminently.
And if we too accept the notion that love is far more
than feelings but a matter of obedience, sacrifice and truth our joy will be
real and full. We will find our lives in
losing them, as Christ promised.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one's life for one's friends.
In
such love we find our life, our hope and our eternal destiny.
