How do humans learn to love? It starts in the womb, as a child hears the voice of her mother in that secure place of growth. It begins in earnest at birth, when a child, perhaps more distressed by this new world of lights and many sounds than by the birth journey, is first touched by this person whose voice she recognizes. With that touch comes the chemistry of her mother’s joy that she has been born—and that labor is over. She feels it skin to skin, is comforted, and “attaches” to her mother.
In turn, the mother, and soon the father and others in the family, “bond” with the child. Those attachment bonds ideally grow and strengthen throughout childhood to form a person capable and secure in giving and receiving love.
Part of that growing and strengthening is extending attachments to family and community. Part of it is learning what to do when love doesn’t come back, when too much love is asked, when too little love is given. For those situations we learn to have boundaries—and we inevitably, at times, experience psychological and spiritual wounds.
Wounds interfere with our ability to love in the human way. We all have them, because no families or communities are perfect—and because our human nature has a tendency to seek and find personal gratification. We are all naturally selfish. We all like what feels good. And we, by nature, would rather dominate than be dominated. And so, we live in a world of survival of the fittest and a proclivity to sin.
Today’s readings introduce a new “nature” into this natural world. It is the nature of God. The nature of God is to love in a way that seeks the good of the one who is loved. God does not have to be loved back in order to maintain his capacity to seek the good of those whom he loves. He knows how much goodness can happen when people love him back, so he seeks our love—the hound of heaven. But if every person on earth turned away from God, failed to believe, and “did what is evil in the sight of the Lord,” God’s nature would not change. God would still love.
All of the Sermon on the Mount, which we leave after today, is Jesus sharing God’s different way to love. It is Jesus teaching us to move beyond our human nature to enter into life in the Kingdom of God here on earth and foretaste that life in heaven. Since God’s way to love is different from even the best of the human way, Jesus also prepares his disciples to be rejected, persecuted, and ridiculed for Kingdom of God living. Jesus cautions us that we have to keep on doing our best to seek the good of others—even our enemies. If we give in to the temptation to fail-to-seek-the-good-of-the-other-who-doesn’t-love-us-back, one more time the way of the world wins. God’s love loses. We lose. Even the world loses.
Let’s look at the readings.
Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18
Leviticus is the book of Mosaic law. If you spend a few minutes reading even the subheadings in your Bible, you will find that it covers just about everything. Here, in chapter 19, God and Moses move beyond practical matters of cleanliness, leprosy, and how to eat animals to reminders that God’s people are to form themselves to become holy like God. (The call to this for God’s people today is emphasized in the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium).
God’s Word here says, “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall do my ordinances and keep my statues and walk in them.” God is saying to his people what we have said to our children many times, “It doesn’t matter what other people are doing, in this family we…..” God is saying, “You shall love me; you shall love each other; you shall love yourself—but never more than you love God or the other person.”
Never love self more? Never seek my own good at the expense of the other? But still love self?
Yes. That’s what Mosaic Law and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount say.
Matthew 5:38-48
God’s Law to the Hebrew people was meant to make them holy. It wasn’t meant to make the world holy. Jesus Sermon on the Mount is meant to make the world holy. Jesus is saying, “Love like God loves.” Love, even if you are not loved back. Seek the good of the other, even if that other person is seeking your harm. Not even safe to love in action? Well, at least pray for the good of the other.
Why does Jesus say this? Jesus is asking his followers to be holy, rather than ordinary human. He is setting them up to eventually be crucified like he will be. Jesus, isn’t there a better way? A more pleasant way? That thought process opens up the giant cans of worms of the problems of evil and suffering.
But think about it: If someone hurts you, does you wrong, that which is UNLOVING has come to you. What will you do with it? Whether you catch the evil and throw it back at the perpetrator of what was done or whether you hold it inside or whether you pass it on to someone else by word or deed—in all these situations, evil goes on. It is one version or another of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
BUT, if you STOP passing on the evil by choosing to LOVE AS GOD LOVES, the evil is not passed on. That doesn’t mean you have to let yourself be abused, demeaned, or otherwise stuck in harm’s way. Choosing to love can be done while getting out of harm’s way. Often, it is necessary to get out–for both your own good and the good of the one hurting you, because it is not loving to enable someone to sin against you. The point is, “Don’t pass on the failure to love. Use God’s love (via the Holy Spirit) to end the string. No matter what, seek the good of the other.
I Corinthians 3:16-23
“Do you not know that you are the temple of God?” Paul asks. Good question. God lives in you, in me, in every baptized person in a special way, and, to a certain extent in every person, for every person is created in the image of God. We are all meant to be houses of God, residences of God, people of God. We are meant to be where and how God is present in the world.
It’s hard, hard, hard when we are not loved back. How do we become a tabernacle of the Holy Spirit with the courage to love God’s way?
Prayer
To that difficulty, I remember a writing of St. Teresa of Calcutta (based on a poem by Kent Keith). This is Mother Teresa’s version:
People are often unreasonable, illogical,
and self-centered;
forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, People may accuse
you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some
false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank,
people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building,
someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness,
there may be jealousy;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today,
people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have,
and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis,
it is between you and God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
