Easter 6

Readings: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

You can learn some amazing things on the internet,
particularly if you frequent the fever swamps
of Twitter or Reddit or, God forbid, 
the comments section of the New York Times.
For example, I have learned that there are certain people
that you are allowed to hate, 
though who those people are depends on your tribe.
In certain circles, you are allowed to hate those 
who like the music of the St. Louis Jesuits,
or those who like the old Latin Mass.
You are allowed to hate 
those who say you have a moral obligation
to get vaccinated against Covid-19,
or those who are hesitant about getting vaccinated.
You are allowed to hate 
those who hold the Church’s traditional view on human sexuality,
or those who are gay or lesbian or transgender,
those who say that black lives matter,
or those who say that all lives matter,
those who believe that President Biden won a free and fair election,
or those who believe that the last election was stolen.

I have also learned that the relative anonymity of the internet
helps you to reduce people to positions,
and in so doing strip them 
of the complexity and richness and paradox
that accompanies every human life.
I have learned that you can call such people 
scum or fascists or homophobes 
or libtards or feminazis or just-plain-old-Nazis
or really anything you like,
because, well, they are wrong.
And I have learned that if you show any respect
to those who are wrong,
if you suggest that they might not 
be reducible to their mistaken opinion,
or if you suggest that something 
other than hatred and mockery might be called for
in persuading them to change their views,
then you are aiding and abetting them 
in their wrongness,
and you are just as bad as they are.

Yes, you can learn some amazing things on the internet,
where anonymity enables contempt,
and the contempt that we learn there spills over
into our daily lives and our personal interactions,
poisons our politics and contaminates our culture.

But you can also learn some amazing things 
in the Holy Scriptures.
You can learn that Jesus commands us 
to love one another as he has loved us.
You can learn that whoever is without love 
does not know God, for God is love.
You can learn that we are all called
to become friends of God
and therefore friends of each other,
even to the point of laying down our lives.
You can learn that God’s Holy Spirit
transforms enemies into friends,
that God shows no partiality,
that even a hated Gentile like Cornelius,
who is not only a Roman 
but part of an occupying army,
can receive God’s favor 
and become a new creation.

Please do not misunderstand me.
Right and wrong do exist.
People do hold views and take actions
that are not simply mistaken, but sinful.
We do have a moral obligation to point out untruths,
to offer fraternal correction to the erring,
to spring to the defense 
of the oppressed and defenseless,
even to denounce error and sin 
in ways that might occasion offense.
But we also have a moral obligation—
indeed, a command from Jesus Christ himself—
to do all this in such a way
that we speak the truth in love,
to speak of those with whom we disagree
as if they were someone’s beloved child or sibling.
Because that is what they are:
they are beloved children of God
and, at least potentially, 
our brother or sister in Christ.

Over the past few decades,
as our world has become more secularized,
it has become common to hear people talk about 
how the Church must become more “counter-cultural”:
how even in the face of worldly rejection and ridicule
Christians are called to hold fast to the Gospel 
and resist the negative trends
that are present in modern, secular culture. 
And we can all think of ways in which Catholic beliefs and values 
go against the current of a variety of cultural trends:
in advocating for the dignity of human life 
from conception to natural death,
in holding to the permanence and sanctity of marriage,
in teaching that private ownership is not an absolute value
but is directed to the common good and flourishing of all,
in criticizing nationalist and racist ideologies
that divide the human family.

More and more it seems to me, however,
that the most countercultural teaching of the Gospel,
is Jesus’ command, “love one another.”
This is the Gospel teaching that,
if put into practice, 
will engender rejection and ridicule,
that will even get you called an enemy of humanity,
a collaborator with evil and a corruptor of morality.
It is also the Gospel teaching that,
if not put into practice,
will make the countercultural stance of the Church
into just one more form of tribal rivalry.

Believe me, I know from experience 
how hard this teaching is;
I am in no way free of the dark impulse
to try to dismiss and destroy
those with whom I disagree.
Yet for us who claim the name of Christian
this is the true line in the sand 
that must not be crossed;
this is the non-negotiable truth.
As the poet W. H. Auden put it:
“We must love one another or die.”
For whoever is without love—
the love that is God’s Spirit poured into our hearts,
the love that breaches the barriers of human enmity, 
the love that lays down its life—
does not know God, for God is love.
So let us pray that the God who loves us
would give us a share in his love, 
and may God have mercy on us all. 

Easter 6

Readings: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 John 4:7-10 ; John 15:9-17

What is Christianity all about?
Some might be inclined
to answer this question
by reciting the creed,
and they would not be wrong,
because being a Christian
does involve believing certain things.
Others might be inclined to answer
by pointing to certain moral principles,
and, again, they would not be wrong,
because being a Christian
does involve behaving in certain ways.
But what Christianity is about
must be something more
than a collection of beliefs and behaviors;
it must be a mystery that sinks its roots
into the heart of life itself.

This mystery, however,
is mysterious not because it is complicated,
but because it is so simple.
Today’s readings from sacred scripture
constitute together a kind of refresher course,
in five simple lessons,
of what Christianity is all about.

First, God is love.
This has of course become something of a cliché,
so much so that if you type “God is…” into Google
“God is love” comes up
as the second most popular search item,
right behind “God is good”
(and just ahead of “God is dope” and “God is dead”).
Because it has become something of a cliché
we can forget what a revolutionary notion this was
in the world of antiquity
whose pantheons were populated
by deities that were powerful and crafty,
but not particularly loving.
Yet Christianity says not only that God is loving,
but that God is love itself.
St. Augustine wrote that if the entire Bible
contained only the words “God is love”
we should ask for nothing more.

Second, the love that is God
is crucified love.
We know the depth of the mystery of love
because “God sent his only Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.”
The cross of Jesus shows us
that the love that gives its life for our life
is love that ceaselessly, relentlessly, scandalously
pours itself out.
And it is precisely in not holding itself back,
not hesitating to give itself up,
that this love is “expiation for our sins”—
that is, it is the life-giving mystery
that we call God,
because there is no greater love than this.

Third, we are called to friendship with the risen Jesus.
As he says in our Gospel reading,
“I call you friends…
it was not you who chose me,
but I who chose you.”
We are called to friendship with God
not because of anything we are or do
but out of the depth of love
that is the divine mystery
revealed in the cross.
And the resurrection of Jesus,
which we celebrate in every Eucharist,
but especially in this Easter season,
is what makes possible
our ongoing friendship with him,
our continuous abiding in the love that is God.

Fourth, we cannot love God
if we do not love each other.
As the first letter of John puts it,
“Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God.”
We love God
by loving our neighbor as Jesus loved us:
loving both friend and enemy,
laying down our lives for one another
in ways dramatic and ordinary:
in acts of sacrifice and of gratitude,
in patience, honesty,
forbearance, and generosity,
for “whoever is without love
does not know God.”

Fifth, we live out our love
in the community created by the Spirit.
While we are called to a universal love
of both friend and enemy,
we live that love from the heart of the Church.
And the Spirit, who is the divine mystery of love
that shows no partiality,
gathers friends of Jesus together
into an unlikely and motley crew of lovers.
At any given place and time
we have no idea what this community will look like,
except we know it will be filled with people
whom we would not have chosen to love
if we were not friends of Jesus.
Peter, in our first reading,
would never have chosen friendship
with a Gentile like Cornelius.
But the Spirit moved and there it was.
Who was Peter to argue with the Spirit?
Look around you.
These are the people
with whom God has called you
into friendship in Christ
through the waters of baptism:
men and women,
old and young,
conservative and liberal,
gay and straight,
native and immigrant,
courageous and cowardly,
stupid and smart,
handsome and hideous,
saints and sinners,
and every type of human animal
who doesn’t quite know what they are,
except they know this one thing:
the God who is love has called them
into his crucified love.
Look around you.
Who are we to argue with the Spirit?

God is love.
The love that is God is crucified love.
We are called to friendship with the risen Jesus.
We cannot love God if we do not love each other.
We live out our love in the community created by the Spirit.
That is it.
That is what Christianity is all about.
Now believe it and live it
as if your life depended on it,
because it does.

Easter 6

Readings: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

Though we have moved, thank God,
out of the top story slot on the cable news programs,
with their endlessly repeated video loops
of the burning CVS at Penn and North,
our city continues to struggle to understand
the events of the past few weeks.

Part of this is the struggle of how to describe
what happened on April 27, a week ago this past Monday.
Was it looting?
A riot?
An uprising?
I suspect that it was in some measure
all three of these at once.
But most of all it was a sign,
a symptom of an underlying disease in our society,
a disease of violence and injustice,
of racism and despair,
a disease that manifests itself
in the poorest parts of our city
but for which we all bear responsibility.

If a sacrament is, as St. Augustine said,
an outward and visible sign
of an inward and invisible grace,
then the violence of April 27
was something like an anti-sacrament:
an outward and visible sign
of a pervasive violence and injustice
that is invisible to many of us,
but which too many
of our brothers and sisters in this city
live with on a daily basis.
It was not simply a sign of the personal moral failures
of those who damaged property or looted businesses,
but of our collective moral failure as a society
to make good on our talk of justice and equality.
I think for many of us these past few weeks
have been a time of soul-searching,
a time in which we have been forced by events
to ask ourselves
how could we have ignored for so long
the truths about our city now made manifest to us.
We have been forced by events to ask ourselves
what we can do
and from where we can draw our hope
as we seek a city that is more peaceful
because it is more just.

The Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl,
recounts a story from his experience
in a Nazi death camp:
“One evening,
when we were already resting
on the floor of our hut,
dead tired, soup bowls in hand,
a fellow prisoner rushed in
and asked us to run out to the assembly grounds
and see the wonderful sunset.
Standing outside we saw sinister clouds
glowing in the west
and the whole sky alive with clouds
of ever-changing shapes and colors,
from steel blue to blood red.
The desolate grey mud huts
provided a sharp contrast,
while the puddles on the muddy ground
reflected the glowing sky.
Then, after minutes of moving silence,
one prisoner said to another,
‘How beautiful the world could be...’”

It seems to me that when we gather
to celebrate the sacraments
it is like the beauty of the sunset
reflecting in the puddles
of that desolate, grey death camp.
God’s grace, at work in the sacraments,
is a thing of great beauty
shining in a world of sin and injustice.
It is the grace that, in our first reading,
welcomed the gentile Cornelius and his household
into the family of God,
the God who, as St. Peter exclaims,
“shows no partiality.”
It is the grace that takes us
from being slaves to sin
and makes us into friends of Christ
and of each other in Christ.
It is the grace of the God
whom we can only know through love,
the God who is love.
And when we baptize,
when we break bread,
when we anoint,
when we absolve,
that beauty shines upon us,
transforming death into life
drawing us along with Jesus
in his passing over
from the tomb of death
to the life of glory.

But while the sacraments
make real and present to us
the beauty of God’s grace,
they should also make us ever more aware
of the graceless violence and hideous injustice
suffered in the hidden corners of our city,
our nation,
our world.
It shouldn’t take the anti-sacrament of a riot
to make us face up to the injustice
suffered by our brothers and sisters,
not when we baptize in order to free from bondage,
not when we gather each week to remember
the legally-sanctioned injustice
of the death of Jesus.
The sacraments should not simply console us
with the beauty of God’s grace.
They should awaken within us a holy impatience,
a holy sense of outrage,
an awareness of how beautiful the world could be
but is not—not yet—
for those confined within places of death.

Christ calls us his friends
and calls us to be friends with one another.
The God who shows no partiality
calls us to cross the barriers
of race and ethnicity, class and culture.
The past few week have shown us how difficult
that seemingly simple command is.
What would it mean if we took this vision
of how beautiful the world could be
and lived it outside these walls?
It’s hard for me to imagine, honestly.
In the past few weeks
my eyes have been transfixed
by the ugliness of injustice.
But here at this altar we catch a glimpse
of the beauty that could be,
when the friendship of all God’s people
will be present not in sacramental signs
but in the reality of the kingdom
of the God who is love.
May our celebration today fill us
with the grace of holy impatience
for the coming of that kingdom.

Easter 6

St. Thomas Aquinas,
at the end of his lengthy commentary on John’s Gospel,
recounts the medieval legend that “as an old man
John was carried to the church by his followers
to teach the faithful.
He taught only one thing:
‘Little children, love one another.’”
Then Thomas adds,
“This is the perfection of the Christian life” (§2653).

This is a legend and not from scripture,
but it rings true with our second reading and Gospel for today,
both of which are traditionally ascribed to St. John
and both of which place love at the center of their message.
From the first letter of John:
“let us love one another, because love is of God.”
From our Gospel:
“This I command you: love one another.”
This is the perfection of the Christian life:
to know the one, true and living God.
And we come to know God by loving because God is love,
and when we love, we know God, as it were, from the inside.

This sounds like pretty good news.
Love: this is the commandment of Christ to his disciples.
Disciples who love will “bear fruit that will remain.”
What could be more simple than that?
As St. Augustine said,
“Love, and do what you will” (Homilies on 1 John 7.8).

But anyone who loves knows
that love is really not simple at all.
Our feelings about people and things
can be complex and conflicted.
Our love finds itself entangled
with a host of emotions and passions,
not excluding anger, jealousy, lust and pride,
which makes it difficult for us to separate what is love
from what might be something else, some darker impulse,
that has attached itself to our love, or masquerades as love.
People bind themselves to others in the name of love,
but they also break those bonds in the name of love.
People die in the name of love,
but they also kill in the name of love.
St. Augustine’s injunction, “love, and do what you will,”
can be twisted so that any action on our part can be justified
so long as we do it in the name of love.

This has been on my mind recently
particularly in light of the highly-publicized murder
of Stephanie Parente, a student at Loyola College, where I teach.
Stephanie, along with her mother and sister,
was killed by her father,
who then took his own life.
I did not know Stephanie personally,
but the impact of her murder on her friends,
many of whom are my students,
and the particular nature of this crime,
a father murdering his family,
has caused me to reflect on this event
more than I might on the typical human tragedy
that confronts me in my morning paper.

I don’t think anyone yet knows what role, if any,
mental illness might have played in this tragedy,
and how this might affect our understanding of this man’s actions.
But what has haunted me
is that this man who killed his wife and children
appears from all reports to have loved them.
What haunts me more is that he quite possibly thought
that he was taking their lives because he loved them —
that he was somehow protecting them,
or ensuring that he could have them with him even in death.
Could it be that he used love as the justification for his actions?

“Love, and do what you will?”
In this case, surely not.
This man may have loved his family;
that is not my place to judge.
But this was not an act that was born out of love
but out of some darker passion that hid behind the mask of love.
Surely there are actions that are simply incompatible with love,
and yet our human love can become so twisted by sin
that we attempt to justify these actions in the name of love.
This is an extreme example,
but the shadow of sin falls across us all
and if I am honest with myself I find that I my love too
is not immune from the darker impulses of the human species.

But thanks be to God that all this talk about love
that we hear in today’s readings
is not first and foremost about our human love at all.
Our second reading says: “this is love:
not that we have loved God, but that he loved us
and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”
This phrase “expiation for our sins”
is perhaps somewhat ominous and technical sounding,
but what it means is that God has sent us Jesus
to redeem the failures of our love.
We are to love one another
not according to the pattern of our fallen human love —
a love that has become entwined with other, darker passions —
but with the pure love that Christ showed on the cross,
the love that lays down its life so as to give new life.
This is the pattern of true love in which we are to abide
and the good news of Jesus Christ
is that God gives it to us as a gift
because God is love.
It is not something that we achieve,
but something that God achieves in us.
Through the free gift of God’s love,
our human love can, over the course of a lifetime,
begin to be untwisted,
disentangled from those dark passions that hide within it;
it can be remade according to the pattern of Christ’s love.
In the waters of baptism, love can be purified,
because we are immersed in God’s own love.
At the table of the Eucharist, true love can be nourished in us,
because the love of God becomes our food and drink.
This is the gift of love in which we are to abide.
This is the love that Christ commands.
This is the perfection of the Christian life.