GOD FIRST LOVED US

Homily for January 7^th, 2021. 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 first loved us. 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!”