Walking in the Straight and Loving Paths of the Lord, Friday of the Second Week of Lent, March 8, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Campus Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Friday of the Third Week of Lent
Memorial of St. John of God
March 8, 2024
Hos 14:2-10, Ps 81, Mk 12:28-34

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below:

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• On Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, God made a special appeal to each of us through the Prophet Joel: “Return to me with your whole heart.” He asked us to “rend our hearts,” to rip them open to receive his merciful love and to share his compassion with others, a summons that not only should influence the way we read today’s Gospel, but is also at the heart of this second phase of Lent — from the 3rd Sunday through the end of the 4th week — when we ponder the meaning of baptism for the Elect preparing for Baptism as well as for all of us who need to grow in living the consequences of our baptism. We can interpret today’s reading in a baptismal key, for this is one of the most commonly chosen readings for the celebration of baptism, since it shows us what the purpose of a Christian life is and how we can keep our end of the baptismal Covenant with the Lord. When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus responds, “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’” Today Jesus reminds us that the whole point of the Lenten season, the whole point of the Christian life to which Lent is meant to restore us, is to return with our whole heart in love to God, and not just our heart, but to return to him with our whole soul, mind and strength as well, to receive his merciful love without any obstacles and then to learn how to let that mercy we’ve received become the way which we respond to others.
• It’s important that we truly confront what Jesus is asking of us. There are many Christians who believe they love the Lord simply because they have good thoughts about him, they admire him, they think that he’s kind, merciful and generous. But Jesus is calling for much more than this. Love is more than having good feelings or impressions about another; love is the unconquerable benevolence that leads to willing, to choosing consistently, the good of the other for the other’s sake. Love is opting as a habit to sacrifice oneself for another, putting someone else ahead of us, like Jesus would say during the Last Supper and put into action the following afternoon: laying down one’s life for one’s friends, in little ways or supremely. There are many Christians who love God to the point of sacrificing for him, but as today’s Gospel shows us, it’s not enough to sacrifice some of the time and gifts that he’s given us for him and his glory. It’s not enough to give God some of our mind, heart, soul and strength. Jesus is calling us to love God with all we’ve got. Today he says that that’s worth more than all sacrifices. To get to that type of love requires a deep conversion on our part. It means that our hope is not just to be good people but to be really holy people.
• We should make this practical. We need to examine how we use our mind to love the Lord, to seek to think as he thinks, to fill our minds with his thoughts through prayer and reading the Bible and good spiritual books. We need to look at whether we love him with all our heart, loving him more than everything and everyone else in our life, including our life. We need to question whether we’re loving him with 100 percent of our strength, overcoming inertia to come to be with him, battling through distractions in prayer, striving to please him every way we can. We need to ask whether we are trying to give him our whole soul through remaining in the state of grace, the state of our baptism, through the gift of the Sacrament of Confession and through not allowing anything unworthy of him to reside in our soul. In the Gospel today, however, Jesus goes a step further than that challenge. He tells us that our love for God will be shown in our love for neighbor. And so we similarly need to ask whether we are striving to love our neighbor with all our mind, thinking about him, trying to understand him and lead him to God; with all our heart, with affection, including and especially those neighbors most difficult to love; with all our strength, sacrificing for them, forgiving them, going the extra mile for them; and with all our soul, seeking to love them together with God and caring in a special way for their souls.
• Such total, committed love is the “straight path” that the Lord wants us to take, to quote from the end of today’s first reading from the Prophet Hosea. It’s the path that those who are “just,” who are in a right relationship with God, take. It’s not enough to know what we must do, but Jesus wants us to take that straight path of love. Faith requires more than understanding; it requires action. Jesus says to the scribe in today’s Gospel, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” The scribe was close to it by his understanding, but he was not yet in it. Like him, we need to do more than merely know that we’re called to love God and our neighbor holding nothing back; we actually have to love.
• Today we celebrate someone who loved God and neighbor by this standard. St. John of God was born in Portugal in 1495 and at 27 became a soldier in Castile. Like many in the military throughout the centuries, he gave himself over to vice, became thoroughly licentious and left the practice of the faith. Eventually the army was disbanded and he worked as a shepherd. At the age of about 40, stung with remorse for his past sins, he resolved to be healed and to give himself over to God’s service. He tried first as a martyr among the Christian slaves in Morocco, but that plan didn’t work. Then he began to care for the poor and eventually for the sick. He heard a sermon by St. John of Avila and was so affected that he filled the Church with his cries, beating his breast and imploring God’s mercy. St. John of Avila gave him God’s mercy and set him straight. From that point forward, until he would die at 55, he immersed himself in the care for others out of love for God. He founded a hospital and allowed himself to be surrounded by those who would eventually be called the “Brothers Hospitallers.” In a letter he wrote that the Church presents to us in the Office of Readings this morning, he describes how deeds of charity done with faith have eternal consequences. “If we look forward to receiving God’s mercy,” he wrote, “we can never fail to do good so long as we have the strength. For if we share with the poor, out of love for God, whatever he has given to us, we shall receive according to his promise a hundredfold in eternal happiness. What a fine profit, what a blessed reward! Who would not entrust his possessions to this best of merchants, who handles our affairs so well? With outstretched arms he begs us to turn toward him, to weep for our sins, and to become the servants of love, first for ourselves, then for our neighbors. Just as water extinguishes a fire, so love wipes away sin.” He did it in such a Christ-like way that his contemporaries simply called him “John of God.” Today he is interceding for us to learn to love God and others like he did.
• The fulfillment of the prayer to be with Christ who seeks to remain with us always until the end of time is here at Mass, where we are best able to grow to love God with all we are and have and love our neighbor with all we are and have. Here at Mass, as we pray in today’s opening prayer, God “pour[s] [his] grace into our hearts, … that we may … obey by [his] own gift the heavenly teaching” he gives us. God the Father gives us his merciful love, he gives us his help, he plants within us Jesus, the Incarnate Love of the Father, so that we may, receiving the Father’s love, incarnate in Jesus, love the Father in communion with Jesus and love others with the very love of Jesus. Today let’s ask Jesus to help us to pray this Mass with all our mind, heart, soul and strength and to be strengthened by Jesus in the Mass to “do this in memory of” him, giving our bodies, our blood, our sweat, our tears, our mind, heart, soul and strength, just like John of God did, in love for others as Jesus has given all he had for us and our salvation.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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