The Church is to be a field hospital for the wounded

There is nothing we can do to stop God from loving us.  God is love.  There is nothing hypocritical about God’s love for us.  It is unconditional and unending.  I invite you to hold onto to this truth:  “There is nothing we can to stop God from loving us.

Yes, there is sin in the world.  There is sin in our own lives.  Sin is our failure to respond to the love of God.  Sin is a failure to love.  We are accountable for the actions of our life --  yes, yes, yes.  But God never stops loving us.

In the Scriptures today, Jesus challenges us to walk our talk, to be doers of the Word of God, to have a faith that is real and genuine and Christ-like.  If we want to be disciples of Jesus, we need to make sure that our liturgical and personal prayer, indeed our whole lives as disciples, bear witness to God’s Word:  revealed in Israel, made flesh in Jesus, and alive in the community of Jesus’ Church throughout all generations.

All three Scripture readings teach us what that living faith is to look life.  It is not enough to speak the words of faith or to spout wisdom from theological texts or canonical laws or liturgical rubrics with all kinds of piety.  Rather Jesus is saying that living faith is expressed in practical charity marked by selflessness and reaching out in service to one all and all, especially the marginalized, those whose lives by accident or even personal choice have left them on the peripheries of society and Church.

In the first Scripture reading, Moses said to the people:  “ Now Israel hear the statues and decrees which I am teaching you to observe; observe them carefully for you to be a wise and intelligent people.”

The laws of God’s people serve like an invisible fence  --  the fence you put in your yard to keep your dog from wandering into the street or menacing the jogger out for a bit of exercise or wherever your dog would like to wander to.  This fence serves an excellent purpose so that the dog can play in the yard without getting hurt.  So too, the ten commandments are our invisible fence that helps us to live in right relationship with one another and with our God.  They make all the sense in the world. 

But strict observance of the law doesn’t determine whether God is going to love us or not.  As I said, no matter what, God cannot stop loving us.  But the commandments are meant to hold us accountable as to how we respond to God’s great love for us.

In the Gospel, we see the anger of Jesus in confronting the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.  Jesus says:  “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Please note that Jesus is not venting against the Pharisees because of their fidelity to religious observance and the ritual tradition.  This is a good thing.  Jesus labels them hypocrites because the words they spoke from their lips did not come from hearts filled with compassion.  They worshiped ritually in solemn ways but this did not translate into deeds filled with love.   Their religion was high on human tradition but low on faithfulness to the law of God.

This Gospel is not just meant for the Pharisees, but its message is to each and every one of us.  Do we walk our talk in our prayer life and in our celebration of the sacraments.    Sometimes we too need spiritual open-heart surgery if see if we are touched by  the love of Jesus in the faith that we live.  Our prayer needs to touch our heart and thus motivate us to share the love of Jesus with others.

Jesus himself went to the synagogue in prayer and was very faithful to the Jewish tradition and obeyed the commandments.  This led Jesus to service and love toward society’s most vulnerable, the sick, the widows, and children.  Jesus lives the Torah.  For Jesus worship, charity and justice are inseparable.

The meaning of today’s Scriptures is that external observance of the law must be translated into inward commitment, but then the inward commitment must be translated back into outward charity.  Jesus cautions us that our external observance of the law declaring our love for the invisible God must become visible in the love that we have for one another.  Our words must be matched by our deeds; our rituals must lead us to develop compassionate hearts.

The Letter to James in the second Scripture is our litmus test for the validity of our liturgical piety.  James says:  “Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.  Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is this:  to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep yourself unstained by the world.

During the coming Holy Year, Pope Francis wants to create a church of mercy, a more pastoral church, a field hospital for the wounded rather than a tribunal that withholds the sacraments until people conform to the ideal.  Jesus’ approach is not to deny the reality of sin, but to question the possibility of one person judging another.  Only God sees the heart.

May we witness to the Joy of the Gospel and  be a Church of Mercy, a Church of Compassion, and be a Church of Healing that reveals the unconditional love of our God.