Tag Archives: love

7th Sunday in Ordinary Time: God’s higher standard of love is our salvation

Luke 6:27-38 – Love your enemies

Here we encounter God’s standard of Love ❤️. It is very, very high!

If we really let it in… it’ll stop our breath! Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly… and so on.

Jesus didn’t just say love your neighbour, he said love your neighbour as yourself 🤯😳. That “as yourself” changes everything.

How much do you love your kids? Love your neighbour that much!

Do you pamper yourself? Pamper your neighbour as much!

Do you believe you’re entitled to a certain standard of lifestyle – make sure your neighbour has that standard too!

Now, can you see God’s standard?

It is a much – much higher – standard than our general standard.

Few – if any – can measure up to it. So how can we be saved then? As Jesus said, “for men… this is impossible, but not for God; for God everything is possible.” Matt 19:26

So step back from these demands of Love ❤️ for a few moments and don’t look at them from our perspective, from the perspective of the demands it places on us. Look at them from God’s perspective.

Because it is among the best description you’ll ever find of the very nature of God and comes from the mouth of God incarnate, Jesus Christ.

God loves his enemies.

God will always do good to those who hate him.

God will always bless those who curse him.

To the man or woman who slaps God on one cheek, God will turn the other cheek.

To the man who’ll take God’s cloak, He’ll let him take his tunic too.

God doesn’t ask for his property back…

If this wasn’t so the earth would have gone up in a ball of fire 🔥 years ago.

God is Love, way, way beyond our understanding of love, and human love even at its very best, is a very dim reflection of the Love that is the Heart of God.

So, while the standard of love that God requires is very high, remember the very same standard is required of God too, otherwise he wouldn’t ask it of us – it is, in fact, the very nature of God and God cannot act any other way – and it will be this very high standard flowing from the heart of God that’ll ensure our salvation. God’s higher standard will always come to meet our lower standard…

That’s what it means to say that God loves his enemies and so on…

God – Love ❤️- will make up the difference between our low, lower standard and what is required to enter Heaven.

Finally, a cautionary note – none of this will happen without our – your – participation!

5th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Overwhelmed by love

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Luke 5:1-11 – They left everything and followed him

Peter is sitting beside Jesus in the boat and can hear every word as Jesus speaks to the assembled crowd.

We’re not told anything about what Jesus was saying but whatever he was saying, it was doing something to Peter.

Because when Jesus asked Peter to put out and drop the nets, Peter pointed out that he’d been fishing all night and caught nothing but then said; “but if you say so” – if you say so – “I will pay out the nets.”

Clearly as Jesus speaks he’s doing something to Peter but he’s doing exactly what he does to every human being when we really begin to hear 👂 him.

It’s the beginning of a radical shift in the focus of Peter’s life; his heart is beginning to be taken by Jesus but he’s not yet at the point where he loses interest in the focus of his life to date – but he’s on his way to it.

Suddenly, against all the evidence of a hard nights work, Peter has more, much more than he wanted when he set out for work – a massive haul of fish. But he’s no longer interested and he’s no longer interested because something better has appeared up close and personal. Jesus has got into him and the first fruit of Jesus really getting into him is… what?

He breaks down. Leave me Lord, I don’t deserve this, this is too much. He’s overwhelmed by the extravagance of God. It’s a beautiful discovery. Jesus is so beautiful, so extravagant with his love… The huge haul of fish is just symbolic of how huge Jesus’ love is… and Peter doesn’t want the symbol, he wants the real deal.

In places like this, so many people can’t even see the symbols never mind pass through to the real deal!

Thats what Jesus means when he speaks about people being dead 😵

In the face of God’s goodness and extravagance Peter understands, perhaps for the first time, his own misery, how utterly small he is…

The love of God for each one of us is real, it’s not an illusion but not enough of us know it.

We cannot really encounter Jesus and God the Father without also receiving in the same moment the sense of our misery – we’re so small, nothing, when we see ourselves in God’s light. When we truly meet Jesus and God it makes us look ridiculously funny… all this running around, everything needing to be bigger and better, all the stuff we think is important becomes quite trivial. Suddenly, most of all that we aspire to makes us look ridiculous, laughable.

We let go of what is taking our hearts only when something greater comes along, gets inside us, steals us away 🥰 but allowing Jesus to steal us away, that’s Heaven!

Nothing we have, nothing we think we have, will hold us when we really begin to encounter Jesus Christ.

It’s in part why nobody comes back from the dead, not because they’re dead, but because we are the ones who are really dead 💀 and they’re the ones really alive.

Justice is an essential ingredient in Love

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When the Baptist is asked about what the people should do he immediately points to justice… and repentance…

Justice is a basic ingredient in love. It is an expression of love.

If we try to live in a love without justice, what’ll happen? The love will break down or it’ll crucify us.

Justice is an essential part of God’s love, of the Kingdom of God, of Heaven.

This is so important on so many levels and for so many people, for us all.

And it is Good News.

It means that sickness and death do not have the last word.

The stroke, the cancer, the Motor Neurons, the MS, the disability, the dementia – whatever – does not have the last word.

But it also means that the tyrants in this world do not have the last word.

That the Hitlers of this world will not have the last word.

Think of the women who’ve disappeared in Ireland, think of their families, and their quest for justice but for whom the justice system is unable to secure a prosecution…

This horror will not be the last word and those responsible will not have the last word.

Think of the criminal gangs and their hired assassins – even if they escape justice by destroying every trace of evidence – that will not be the last word, they will not have the last word.

This Justice operating within God’s love ensures there’s a putting to rights, in ways beyond all human imagining – the closest human experience is the pain forgotten in childbirth when a child is born – a separating of sheep from goats, wheat from chaff… which is why Jesus always calls us to repentance…

In God’s love 🥰 we’re bound toward forgiveness

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24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Matthew 18:21-35

It’s the sense of being “bound” to have pity that I’m after.

Where does it come from?

Elsewhere, in Lk 7:47, Jesus says that “it is the man who is forgiven little who shows little love.”

This is an amazing teaching really because it suggests that it is our personal sinfulness, acknowledged, confessed and forgiven that empowers us to forgive others.

I think Jesus essential point is true, the man who knows himself to be a sinner, is fully aware of his misery before God, but has appealed to that same God and knows that he is forgiven and loved – and knows this in his heart – does actually feel bound to forgive others, more, he is empowered toward forgiveness.

Sin when it truly meets God’s love breeds not more sin but more love ❤️

Traces of Heaven and Hell in the most meaningful and painful experiences of life

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What’s Heaven like?

I believe we already know. Well, we’ve inklings of what it’s like in our flesh, in our deepest and most meaningful human experiences.

As far as I’m concerned all the important stuff foreshadows eternity.

So what’s the best thing that ever happened to you?

Most people will say; love… when it’s true of course!

Or they’ll say; my children.

Before the birth of our children we were living – the only life we knew – but it was a life of a much lower quality.

Sometimes at weddings I ask the couple to think of their individual lives before they met.

You can almost see the emptiness registering!

Before meeting they had a life but it was life of a much lower quality.

Before your children you had a life too… but of a different quality altogether. Few want to go back.

The quality of life after the experience of true love or after the birth of your children – the deep and deeper meaning – is a reflection of gaining or stepping-up to the life of Heaven.

The life of Heaven is a step-up in quality again. In fact, it’s the ultimate quality of life.

After death nobody ever wants to come back except the souls in trouble. They want to come back to undo so much but can’t… that’s their suffering.

Imagine if you had to go back to your life before true love or to your life before your children.

Can you imagine it?

Do you ever really get back? Are you not always bereft?

Evening falls over the River Slaney… can you see the path of your life condensed into a single day?

That’s reflecting the soul’s loss of Heaven.

The loss of true love or of a child and it’s impact on the quality of life is actually a reflection of what it’s like for the soul to lose Heaven.

In the most meaningful and painful spaces of our lives we’re always reflecting eternity… glimpsing eternity.

Love is the standard by which God will judge us – but it is love of a much higher standard than we realize

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Jesus has taught us that there’s a definitive standard – love defined as love of God and love of neighbour – by which we will all be judged.

But don’t be complacent about God’s love… and be careful of presumption…

Because this love is of a much higher standard than most people realize. Remember Jesus’ teaching that his new standard is higher than the old; love your enemies.

Or the widow who put in one small coin. She put in more than all the others although the others put in much bigger amounts… because she gave everything she had.

He’s indicating different levels of love… which correspond to different levels in the next life, in the kingdom of God.

When Jesus speaks about love he really means all-consuming charity, charity that no longer experiences even a hint of self denial. He’s not really thinking about romantic love.

So be careful… sometimes people use Jesus emphasis on love to include stuff that may be contrary to Jesus intentions; may be contrary. Some TV personalities are quite adept at this!

Here’s a good illustration of the inner dynamics of judgement; suppose I’m buying a car. For many it’s an ordinary enough event and few would even relate it to God. But for others it’s far from an everyday event. I could splash out 20,000 or 50,000 or even 80,000. What we do not suspect is that we’ll relive that choice – and every other choice – from within the standard of God’s love at the moment of our judgement; how did I love God and how did I love my neighbour in these choices?

In our judgment we’ll see what we actually did with what we had, and what we could have done – and much of it will be stuff that we don’t even connect with God, stuff that we might call “business” or “the market” or some other name whereby we remove whole areas of our lives from God, as if God could be excluded, but seeing what we could have done, but didn’t do, at this level – in the presence of God – is actually pure punishment.

So while we might think that a man or woman has been successful, that same success may prove their downfall at the moment of their judgement.

The criteria of judgment will always be; how did I love God and love my neighbour in my everyday choices and no area of human life, endeavour or enterprise escapes God’s attention.

Have you ever wondered why Jesus taught that the poor are blessed? Partly, because they avoid this responsibility and thus they avoid this kind of judgement. But that’s only part of the reason.

The bigger part is how success, more often than not, deceives and empowers our small ego lives into choking our need for big life, for God.

But that’s another day’s work!