Homily for January 7th, 2016. Letter of John
4:19-5:4.
“We love God
because he first loved us,” we heard in our first reading. Isn’t that why we
love our parents? If they were reasonably good parents, they loved us when we
were still in the womb. “We talk to the baby,” a young father said, when his
wife was expecting their first child. Asked what they said to the baby, he
replied: “We talk to the baby when we’re lying in bed, about everything we did
that day.” Already, before they have seen the little one who is the fruit of
their love for each other, the bond of love is being woven.
So the tiny
child comes into the world already loved. And this love is not just a matter of
feelings. It takes flesh as it were, in the often arduous toil of caring for an
infant. That is how each one of us learns to love: from our parents, mothers
especially. In the tragic cases in which a child is unwanted, the ability to
love is stunted, with often bitterly unhappy consequences in later life.
Because we are
imperfect sinners, God’s love for us infinitely exceeds our love for our
children. But the priorities remain the same. If we have any capacity to love
at all, it is because God has loved us first. Nor does God’s love for us
slacken, let alone disappear, when we fail to respond to his love. In Jesus’
parable of the Prodigal Son the father never stopped loving his son after the young
man left home. How do we know that? We know it from the fact that at the son’s
return his father saw him “while he was still a long way off” (Luke 15:20). The
father was looking for him. You don’t
keep looking for someone you have ceased to love.
“The love of
God is this,” our first reading tells us, “that we keep his commandments. And
his commandments are not burdensome.” Really? Don’t we often think of God’s
commandments as fences to hem us in? In reality they are signposts pointing us
to a happy and fulfilled life. It is so that God’s love for us, given to us
already in the womb, and continuing no matter how far we may stray from him,
may be deepened and strengthened, and bear fruit in lives of generous service
to God and others, that we are here.
And so we pray in this Mass to the
One who is love: “Come, Lord Jesus!”
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