Quinquagesima Sunday 10.2.13 Charity
The word ‘love’ has many shades and meanings, so some prefer to use the word Charity to distinguish between the higher forms of love involving divine gifts - and the everyday form of ‘love’ which can mean you love your dog, or even that you love ice cream.
‘Charity’ has its problems as a word also, because it has been narrowed down in ordinary language to mean helping the poor; and while that is a good thing to do, the theological word Charity has much richer meaning than that.
Charity means the love of God operating in us, helping us to love Him first of all, and then others in the light of our love for God.
The ultimate expression of love is not a romantic matter at all. It is a willingness to die for the other person. This is worth more than all the sweet words and flowers in the world.
Taking this to the divine level we see the highest image of love in our faith as the action of martyrs – being roasted alive, eaten by lions, torn limb from limb etc. And the greatest martyrdom – Our Lord Himself on the Cross.
If you asked people to pick an image of love how many people would pick the Cross, but that is the strongest expression of love possible.
Today’s epistle defines perfect charity (1 Cor 13). We can say we love someone only if we are prepared to suffer for that person’s wellbeing.
We are still learning to understand love at this highest level. We tend to stop too soon, as with other spiritual realities. We are being taught both the way real love operates and its possible scope. It is more demanding than we thought and it is also more far-reaching.
We cannot stop until we love God; to regard Him as the first and last; to submit all and every aspect of our lives to Him. It all belongs to Him anyway.
Initially this sounds abstract and out of reach. Who can tell a couple in love they should love God more than each other? Yet it is the truth.
The human love is a stepping stone to higher things, just a glimpse of what real love is. We aint seen nothing yet as far as love goes – in terms of what we will experience in heaven.
This is why people become cynical about love because they base their beliefs on what they see people do to each other instead of what God has done for us. They say there is no God but they have stopped looking for Him..
No wonder people had trouble understanding Our Lord. When He predicted He would be crucified the apostles could not make any sense of that. If you know you are going to be crucified then you should do something to avoid it. That is what human wisdom would say. But divine love is different.
He loves us enough that He would rather die to set us free from sin than keep His life and see us die instead.
This is real Charity. It never loses any intensity with the passing of time or the number of people loved.
Would we be willing to die for a bunch of strangers? Probably not yet. But this is where we must head.
God loves us first - a love which changes us and increases our capacity to love Him in return. And then we can take in the Neighbour and we do get stronger. Even our capacity for sacrifice increases.
May the Lord help us understand, receive, and return the gift of Charity.
No comments:
Post a Comment