Christianity did not arrive in the world
as a philosophy or an ethical code,
but as a community that grew up
around a person: Jesus of Nazareth.
Of course, we Christians do
have beliefs and rules
but, at the heart of it,
Christianity is a way
of being with one another
by being with Jesus.
The Church is not an optional support group
for Christians who need that sort of thing.
To be Christian is to belong to a tribe—
a tribe not defined
by land or ideology or bloodline,
but by abiding in Christ’s love
as we abide in love for each other:
“As I have loved you, so you also
should love one another.”
To be a Christian is to belong
to the community of those
who love one another as he has loved us.
as a philosophy or an ethical code,
but as a community that grew up
around a person: Jesus of Nazareth.
Of course, we Christians do
have beliefs and rules
but, at the heart of it,
Christianity is a way
of being with one another
by being with Jesus.
The Church is not an optional support group
for Christians who need that sort of thing.
To be Christian is to belong to a tribe—
a tribe not defined
by land or ideology or bloodline,
but by abiding in Christ’s love
as we abide in love for each other:
“As I have loved you, so you also
should love one another.”
To be a Christian is to belong
to the community of those
who love one another as he has loved us.
And how has he loved us?
He has loved us with a love
both divine and human:
divine in its inexhaustible power
and human in its form of appearing.
Love mighty enough to call a universe into being
and yet emptying itself to become
the infant entrusted to our human care,
the teacher speaking our human language,
the victim receiving our human wrath,
the risen one revealing our human destiny.
Above all, he has loved us without reserve,
without holding anything back;
he has, as John’s Gospel says,
loved us to the end.
And we in turn
should love one another in this way:
we should love each other to the end.
He has loved us with a love
both divine and human:
divine in its inexhaustible power
and human in its form of appearing.
Love mighty enough to call a universe into being
and yet emptying itself to become
the infant entrusted to our human care,
the teacher speaking our human language,
the victim receiving our human wrath,
the risen one revealing our human destiny.
Above all, he has loved us without reserve,
without holding anything back;
he has, as John’s Gospel says,
loved us to the end.
And we in turn
should love one another in this way:
we should love each other to the end.
Easier said than done, right?
Loving as he loved is difficult
because people can be pretty unlovable:
petty, stubborn, willfully blind,
self-involved, thin-skinned, and so forth.
This is as true today as it has always been.
But it also seems to be difficult in new ways.
We live in a culture that has long valued
independence and individualism
but our society is now said to be suffering
from an “epidemic of loneliness”:
over 50% of people say that they have
fewer social connections than they would like.
Some of this might be the long-term effect
of our individualism and independence,
and some may be fallout from the pandemic:
“social distancing” has become a habit.
Whatever the cause, medical professionals note
numerous threats to human flourishing
associated with loneliness:
impaired cognitive function,
depression, anxiety, increased risk of suicide,
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, infection.
Loving as he loved is difficult
because people can be pretty unlovable:
petty, stubborn, willfully blind,
self-involved, thin-skinned, and so forth.
This is as true today as it has always been.
But it also seems to be difficult in new ways.
We live in a culture that has long valued
independence and individualism
but our society is now said to be suffering
from an “epidemic of loneliness”:
over 50% of people say that they have
fewer social connections than they would like.
Some of this might be the long-term effect
of our individualism and independence,
and some may be fallout from the pandemic:
“social distancing” has become a habit.
Whatever the cause, medical professionals note
numerous threats to human flourishing
associated with loneliness:
impaired cognitive function,
depression, anxiety, increased risk of suicide,
cardiovascular disease, diabetes, infection.
But for those of us
who belong to the tribe of Christ
there is a more profound threat
in this epidemic of loneliness,
for we cannot be Christian alone.
To be a Christian is to be part of a tribe,
part of a body that gathers.
It’s not enough to claim
membership in the Church
in the abstract way one claims membership
in a political party or an honor society.
The Catholic tradition expects the tribe
to gather weekly,
on the day of Christ’s resurrection,
to celebrate the Eucharist—
not simply to recall Christ sacrifice
and receive his body and blood,
but also to be confronted with the concrete reality
of the brothers and sisters for whom Christ died;
to bear with our unbearable neighbor
for at least one hour;
to try to love those who are
petty, stubborn, willfully blind,
self-involved, thin-skinned—
those who, in short,
are as bad as we are.
who belong to the tribe of Christ
there is a more profound threat
in this epidemic of loneliness,
for we cannot be Christian alone.
To be a Christian is to be part of a tribe,
part of a body that gathers.
It’s not enough to claim
membership in the Church
in the abstract way one claims membership
in a political party or an honor society.
The Catholic tradition expects the tribe
to gather weekly,
on the day of Christ’s resurrection,
to celebrate the Eucharist—
not simply to recall Christ sacrifice
and receive his body and blood,
but also to be confronted with the concrete reality
of the brothers and sisters for whom Christ died;
to bear with our unbearable neighbor
for at least one hour;
to try to love those who are
petty, stubborn, willfully blind,
self-involved, thin-skinned—
those who, in short,
are as bad as we are.
And maybe this hour is all we can manage.
Maybe rituals of shared listening and singing,
of wishing peace to our neighbor,
of eating and drinking
the one bread and one cup
are as much love as we can handle.
But these are not mere ritual gestures;
these are sacred signs that make present to us
the love that loves us to the end,
and calls us more deeply into itself
by calling us into love for one another,
a love that shows itself to the world
in concrete acts of service and fellowship,
love leavening loneliness.
In the midst of our loneliness
this hour opens a door into loving as he loves,
and to step through that door
is to begin here and now
a shared journey to the heavenly Jerusalem,
where God will dwell with us
and we will be God’s people together,
where God will wipe every tear from our eyes—
no more death or mourning or wailing or pain—
where the old order of isolation
will have passed away
and we will know and love each other
even as we are each known and loved by God.
The servant of God Dorothy Day,
who devoted her life
to living with the poor,
to feeding the hungry
and sheltering the outcast, wrote:
“We cannot love God unless we love each other,
and to love we must know each other.
We know Him in the breaking of bread,
and we know each other in the breaking of bread,
and we are not alone anymore.
Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too,
even with a crust, where there is companionship.
We have all known the long loneliness
and we have learned that the only solution is love
and that love comes with community.”
Or, as another American Catholic, Pope Leo,
said this morning in his inaugural homily:
“With the light and the strength of the Holy Spirit,
let us build a Church founded on God’s love,
a sign of unity,
a missionary Church that
opens its arms to the world,
proclaims the word,
allows itself to be
made ‘restless’ by history,
and becomes a leaven
of harmony for humanity.”
Let us pray that the one we know
in the breaking of bread
will call us out of our isolation
and into journeying together to our true home,
drawing us ever deeper into loving as he loves,
and that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.
in the breaking of bread
will call us out of our isolation
and into journeying together to our true home,
drawing us ever deeper into loving as he loves,
and that God in his mercy
might have mercy on us all.
