Kent Beausoleil, S.J.

Sept. 2, 2007

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

        Extremes.  One thing that I have learned about my life through prayer and reflection is that God informs my spirituality by speaking to me in extremes.  On the lighter side, for example, when I was in high school, (where a young child’s mind leads to some great school day, day-dreams, and where one begins to ask questions about one’s future career and life), I took something that I was interested in, horses, and in a moment of denial, thought that I would like to become a jockey. 

            Built more like a linebacker than a jockey, tall and husky, versus, short and skinny, God’s plan for me I had in humility to realize, was not going to be found in me being the next person to win the Kentucky Derby.  Too which I am sure all the racing horses around the world say, thank you Jesus!  Could you just imagine that poor horse looking at me as I walked up to it before the race started knowing I was to be its jockey? 

            More seriously, though, the extreme movements of having friends and then losing them through the passage of time, deadly car accidents, suicides, were God’s way of showing me how important friendship is.  The gift of a secure family life shaken by the extreme moments of losing our parent’s, the struggles and hardships that our family had to endure, were there as ways for God to show us how important family is.  The extreme emotions of finding and losing true love in my life humbled me in realizing that a broken heart, comes to realize the importance of love, a broken heart learns how to love, and learns that love for those we truly care about never really disappears.

            Ultimately, I learned, through the mystery of life’s ups and downs, a certain sense of humility.  I learned that in life there are always going to be ups and downs.  I also learned that despite all life has to offer that life is indeed filled with so many good gifts.  I learned that God and God’s love were there through good times as well as bad.  Our God is indeed a loving God, gifting us with all good things, and loving us without recompense.

            Sirach, Hebrews, and Luke offer us passages today that challenge us to reflect on the extremes in our lives and point us to a place of hope.  Sirach contrasts the lofty and renowned with the meek and humble.  The greatness of God is contrasted with human humbleness.  Water extinguishes fire.  Almsgiving atones for sin.  People who fall find support.  At first glance, the contrasts puzzles and challenges, but the ultimate message assists us in spiritual growth.  The growth to realize that only a humble heart can recognize the depth of God’s love and loves in kind.

            Hebrews contrasts those things that rip apart familial love in a community – that rip apart our relationships, our covenant, with one another and with our God.  By loving those we love while neglecting the stranger we exclude.  When we turn our back on those imprisoned or suffering and treat them as if they have the plague how then can we expect comfort from the prisons or suffering of our own lives.  When we scream out I want to be loved and deny the real presence of love from those who hold a special place in our lives and then act in ways that defile those relationships, how can we expect to experience love in return?  When money becomes the basis for our existence and then we ignore those who go without, those who have no home or food, what happens when ill fortune and famine hit our own houses?  Hebrews challenges us once again to humbly love on another as we have been loved.

            Jesus knows us and Luke knows that Jesus knows us.  We are all good people at heart.  We strive to know the love of God in our lives and let that love impact our love for neighbor and self.  Yet Jesus knows there are times we want to judge others like the Pharisees.  Jesus knows that we want to be honored and loved and sometimes this becomes the soul focus of who we are.   We scream look how great I am love me and then we forget about others and forget about the world around us.  I myself am guilty of it and in my own life God challenges me to conversion.  Yet what Jesus is doing is saying look what we desire, of being recognized, honored and loved, is not a bad thing.  What is bad is when we stop honoring and loving all our sisters and brothers by no longer caring for them, no longer empowering them, no longer including them, no longer forgiving them.  What is bad is when we think only of our own glory.

            Both Sirach and Jesus in Luke, ask us to see that the love we give is the love we receive and the love we receive is the love we must give.  The minute we say I am great, I belong up front, we also affirm in the extreme that others are not great that others don’t belong.  We set ourselves up to fall.  For those who exalt themselves, will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.  The parable and discourse calls us to examine this and realize that sometimes our actions are not the path to love but the path to division, to exclusion.  Yet the reality is that God’s love is an inclusive love and thus when we love as God loves we bring that love and hope to the world.

            Honestly, I struggle with things. I struggle with the challenge of today’s scriptures.  Someone commits a crime and I am called to love them?  Someone is crossing a border illegally looking for a better life, a better job, and prosperity for their family, and I am called to love when my own family struggles?  Someone does not hold the same views as I do and I am called to love?  Am I to give alms, to give my hard-earned money, the fruit of my labor, to someone else less fortunate then me?  Am I to give up my place at table so that the blind and lame may have a seat?  The wisdom literature of Sirach says yes that this is our call.  The letter of Paul to the Hebrews says yes that is our call.  Jesus says yes we are called to love one another. 

            When we fling out broadly acts of loving-kindness, through almsgiving, as in Sirach, through hospitality, remembrance, honor, and mutual care, as found in Hebrews, when we invite all people to the heavenly banquet as Jesus teaches in Luke, we love as God loves.  The scriptural extremes are there to show us the hope that by loving we quench the fire of hate, by loving we atone for sin, by loving freely as God does, we find support in one another. 

            Humility, the ability to see ourselves as God sees us, allows God to be God and allows us to embrace God’s loving action in our lives.  True humility allows us to step out of our own shoes into the shoes of another whose life may not be as blessed as ours.  True humility helps us to realize the presence of God’s love and goodness in our life and the courage to offer that love to all our sisters and brothers – all God’s children. 

            God calls us in hope to act with a loving, humble heart -- for it is only love that frees us all from our prisons.  It is love that consoles all the ill-treated.  It is love that begets love in marriage, in family, in friendship, in life, and in all things.  God’s love, the Letter to Hebrews screams out, never forsakes us.  God’s true love reaches through the extremes of our lives, the ups and downs, and offers us constancy -- for Jesus’ love is the same yesterday, and today, and forever.  The ups and downs of our lives, they humble us, yet they also teach us to embrace that which is good and of God. They teach us how to love.