St. Norbert's Church - Sunday Reflections

So what does it mean to love our neighbor as ourself? This Sunday is surely about learning to love everyone who comes into our life. It is about learning to love our enemy as well. It is a promise from our Lord that the Kingdom of heaven is about loving God and our neighbor.

Today's first reading is taken from the Book of Exodus and tells us about how we should treat strangers and foreigners. God tells us that He is compassionate. Are we? So many times we find in our Scriptures that we are to live like God: compassionate, loving, forgiving, helping all those in need, etc. We can only do this well as we begin to experience this same God at work in our lives as a God of compassion, a God of love, a God of forgiveness, etc.

The Gospel picks up on the first reading. Matthew has this clear and precise statement about what is important: Love the Lord our God and love our neighbors as our self. That is not so difficult as long as the neighbor is nice and trying to love us also. The challenge is always when the neighbor is a really difficult person who is not in the least concerned about us.

Again, we must meditate on the fact that we can only love when we know that we are loved. The more that we know that God loves us, the more we can love others. The love of God is poured upon us and through us to others. There is no other way to live in the Kingdom except through love.

We could paraphrase the First Letter to the Thessalonians this way: we have received the word in great affliction and yet with joy from the Holy Spirit. In this way we can become a model for all believers. Especially today when the Church is disparaged and vilified on all sides, we can accept the word in great affliction. We recognize that some in the Church have acted so very badly and their actions have brought affliction on all of us who continue to believe that the Church is truly the presence of our Lord Jesus in this world.

True love accepts suffering, especially when that suffering can lead to purification and the deepening of love. True love understands that our beloved can be perfect in God and yet full of sinfulness and brokenness at the level of humanity. True love is able to see the divine shining through all that is, especially through that which is broken.

May our love for Jesus help us to embrace the broken, the rejected, those who are no good and all who are truly poor in spirit. This love from Christ can transform them and us - and in that our hearts will find joy.