The Look of Love - 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, B
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| From biography.com |
How do ordinary people become saints? How can we go from surviving to thriving in the spiritual life? There’s a key difference between just getting by and coming to know the Lord deeply, and I’m sure that many of us have wondered what that difference may be. We hear stories about so many saints and the incredible things they did, but far too often they seem like mythical figures rather than relatable men and women. So we either get frustrated, or we just choose to not think about it and live ordinary lives. We may think, “Well, I can follow Jesus in some ways, but I’m not good enough to follow him all the way, so I’ll just hope to make it purgatory!”
We find this same contrast within today’s Gospel passage.
Jesus asks this rich young man, “Are you following the commandments?” and he
says yes. Then Jesus asks, “Will you
sell everything you have and follow me?”
Woah – that’s a huge leap! No
wonder the man walks away sad, and we don’t know what happens to him. We can sympathize with Jesus, “How hard it is
to enter the kingdom of God!” But if
it’s so hard, is this what Jesus really wants for us? What has he made us for?
I see in this Gospel that Jesus lays out two levels of the
spiritual life. First is following the
commandments, which are indeed very important!
Sin is not just breaking God’s rules; it’s breaking our relationship
with Him and others and harming ourselves.
A helpful analogy for this is to think about playing soccer – a popular
sport at school recess – but to imagine that we’re playing soccer on top of a
skyscraper. I could be running after the
ball one second, and then the next I’m falling through the air! So if we are going to play safely, we need to
have walls and boundaries around the edge so that we or the ball won’t fall off. Now, if we really wanted to, we could try to
subvert those walls, but it definitely wouldn’t be a good idea. It’s the same with the commandments, these
are the boundaries that keep us from harmful actions; we could reject them if
we want, but then thanks be to God that He can then save us from falling.
But the crucial thing is that we don’t need to spend all of
our time focused on the walls. Once we
know that they’re solid, we can freely play soccer! It’s the same thing for the Christian life –there
is so much more to Christianity than following the commandments. Even if we still struggle with them, there’s
something more that we’re all called to.
So there’s the second level of the spiritual life: giving our lives away
in sacrificial love.
Now, the young man’s objection is that there seems to be
such a huge leap between following the commandments and giving up
everything. We went from here to there
in three sentences – that’s pretty quick!
But there’s an incredible transition point, a third thing, that’s easy
to miss in this passage. The Gospel
says, after the man asks what else he needs, that Jesus looked at him, loved
him, and responded. He looked upon this
man in love, in infinite love, and in this love, he speaks about what this man
is called to. But the man’s face fell,
he turns his eyes away from Christ, he refuses to receive Christ’s love in this
moment, and he walks away. If the man
had kept his eyes on Jesus as he looked upon him in love, how might this story
have a different ending?
For every person, Christ has a specific calling, a vocation,
that is a call to sacrificial love. Only
a few are called to give up all physical possessions or to leave their family
behind, but everyone has a particular way that they can love with their entire
lives. This vocation, while it includes a
particular state of life, isn’t a one-time decision, but Jesus desires for us
to grow every day. When I hopefully
finish seminary and am ordained a priest, I’m not finished growing as a man,
but I’ve only begun to grow in love, virtue, joy, and strength for the people I
lead. When couples are married, they’re
only beginning to grow in love, to learn what it means to sacrifice, especially
for children. Even when we become older,
there’s always the opportunity to become more self-giving in love and
sacrifice. Like in today’s Gospel, this
is all possible when we receive Jesus’ love for us, when we remain in His look
of love through prayer and community.
One of my favorite spiritual writings is a letter that
Mother Teresa wrote to her Missionaries of Charity. Mother Teresa’s life is a fascinating story;
she was a religious sister teaching kids when in 1947, she received her “call
within a call,” to give up everything she had and go into the streets of India,
caring for the poorest of the poor.
Jesus looked upon her in love, and she responded in incredible
generosity, not letting her face fall but looking always to Him. So this is what she writes to her sisters in
1993; it’s a longer quotation, but I’d encourage for all of us to listen with
open hearts: “Jesus wants me to tell you again how much love He has for each
one of you – beyond all you can imagine.
I worry some of you still have not really met Jesus – one to one – you
and Jesus alone. We may spend time in
chapel – but have you seen with the eyes of your soul how He looks at you with
love? Do you really know the living
Jesus – not from books but from being with Him in your heart? Have you heard the loving words He speaks to
you? Ask for the grace, He is longing to
give it . . . My children, you don’t have to be different for Jesus to love
you. Only believe – you are precious to
Him. Bring all you are suffering to His
feet – only open your heart to be loved by Him as you are. He will do the rest.”
What Mother Teresa says speaks to each of our hearts. We may feel like the rich young man – we feel
like we want to go deeper into a relationship with Jesus, but the cost seems
too great. Yet when Jesus calls each of
us, he looks upon us with love. One way
the Lord has given us to receive him is through the imagination or the
“spiritual senses.” Just as we have
physical senses, we can spiritually sense the Lord, who lives within our
souls. In your imagination, simply be in
the place of this rich young man and see how the Lord looks upon you in
love. What does he look like? What do his eyes look like as they look into
yours?
When we remain in Jesus’ look of love for us, then
sacrificial love becomes more than possible – it becomes a reality. Take some time each day this week to come
back to this moment, and here at this Mass, when you see the Eucharist elevated
above the altar and held in front of your eyes, see Jesus looking upon you in
love, so that we may all thrive and become saints.
For the full letter from Mother Teresa, see https://blog.franciscanmedia.org/franciscan-spirit/in-mother-teresa-own-words-i-thirst-i-quench
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