The Thirty-first Sunday of the Year (B)
Dear
brothers and sisters,
This
month of November has long been given to the remembrance of the dead, and not
simply to their memory, but to the offering of prayers and sacrifices on their
behalf. As we feel the temperatures fall and plummet, as the leaves turn fallow
and fall to the ground, as the grass brown and the darkness lengthens, we see
the slow death of nature and it is only fitting that we consider now our own
death.
Saint John of the Cross reminds
us that “at the evening of life, we shall be judged on our love.”[1]
This Jesus makes very clear today with his response to the question of the
scribe: “You shall the love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength … You shall love your
neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29-32). Truly, love is the measure of all things.
When, at long last, the dust from
which we were made “returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath
returns to God who gave it,” we will indeed be judged on our love (Ecclesiastes 12:7). We will not be judged so much by what we have done or what we have
failed to do, although these things will, of course, matter; what matters most
is the depth of our love because love “is worth more than all burnt offerings
and sacrifices.” (Mark 12:33). To put it plainly, we will be judged according to
our imitation of Christ Jesus.
When we stand before the throne
of God and render to him an account of our life, “perfect love will make
possible entrance into heaven, imperfect love will require purification, and a
total lack of love will mean eternal separation from God.”[2]
The angels and saints will escort those who have loved with the perfect love of
Christ into the glories of heaven; those who have loved, although imperfectly,
will begin their purgation to be purged and cleansed of the effects of their
sins; and those who have not loved will enter the gates of hell because they
have rejected love itself.
Given this criterion of judgment,
we might well ask what it means to love. It has been said that, “in the end, in
fact, love alone enables us to live, and love is always also suffering: it
matures in suffering and provides the strength to suffer for good without
taking oneself into account at the actual moment.”[3] The
Apostle Saint John reminds us that “in this is love: not that we have loved
God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins” (I John 4:10). Indeed, in Jesus Christ, “no longer is [love] self-seeking, a sinking in
the intoxication of happiness; instead it seeks the good of the beloved: it
becomes renunciation, and it is ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.”[4]
How very easy – almost too easy -
it is for us to praise Jesus with the scribe and say to him:
Well said, teacher. You are right in saying ‘He is One and there is no other than he.’ And ‘to love him with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself’ is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mark 12:32-33).
This man gives the correct answer
and in so doing justifies himself; he knows he is to love God and his neighbor,
but he does not do so fully; he will not let himself be vulnerable to love. If
he did make himself vulnerable to love, he would have recognized Jesus not as a
“teacher,” but as the “high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from
sinners, higher than the heavens” (Hebrews 7:26).
Jesus knows the scribe’s lack of
love - just as he knows our own - and so he says to him and to us, “You are not
far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34). A high compliment, maybe, but if it
was, why, then, did “no one [dare] to ask him any more questions” (Mark 12:34)?
The scribe felt a gentle rebuke in Jesus’ words, because “to say ‘you are not
far from’ suggests that the scribe was still at some distance from the reign of
God.”[5]
Inasmuch as we fail to love, we
are far from the kingdom of God because love is the measure to the Kingdom of
God. How readily do we humble ourselves to accept the love of God that we do
not deserve? How readily do we return his love? How readily do we show to others
the love that Jesus lavishes upon us?
Sad to say, not all of us understand these spiritual values as well as we should, nor do we give them a proper place in our lives. Many of us, in fact, strongly attracted by sin, may look upon these values as of little moment, even something of a nuisance, or we ignore them altogether.[6]
Now, then, we return to our
initial thought from Saint John of the Cross: “At the evening of life, we shall
be judged on our love.”
We know that we have not always
loved perfectly as the Lord commands us. We grow jealous, we lie, steal, and
cheat; we grow angry and irritated at one another; we judge and condemn those
who are one with us in Christ. In short, we fail to keep the supreme command of
love and we fall into sin. And when we come to the end of our earthly life and
suffer death, we will stand before him who is Love itself.
We can be sure of this, that “all
who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are
indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo
purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of
heaven.”[7]
We
know, too, as we read in Sacred Scripture, that “it is a holy and wholesome
thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins” (II Maccabees 12:46). This is why we visit the graves of our loved ones in November
and why we continue to pray for them, confident in the power of intercessory
prayer. The Church has always commended “almsgiving, indulgences, and works of
penance undertaken on behalf of the dead” because, as Saint John Chrysostom
asks, “If Job’s sons were purified by their father’s sacrifice, why would we
doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died
and to offer our prayers for them.”[8]
Said Saint Ambrose so many
centuries ago: “We have loved [them] in life. Let us not forget [them] in
death.” Let us, then, continue our love for our beloved dead – and for all the
dead. Let us continue to offering our sufferings out of love for them, asking
the Lord to make them “perfect forever” (Hebrews 7:28) and welcome them swiftly
into his Kingdom of “refreshment, light, and peace” (Roman Canon). Then, together
with them around the throne of God, we will cry out with the angels and all the
saints: “I love you, Lord, my strength” (Psalm 18:2)! Amen.
[1] Saint
John of the Cross, Dichos, no. 64.
[2] United States Catechism for Adults, 153.
[3] Pope
Benedict XVI, Address to the Clergy of Aosta, 25 July 2005.
[4] Ibid., Deus caritas est, 6.
[5]
Pseudo-Jerome, Commentary on Mark.
[6] Pope
Saint John XXIII, Homily at the Canonization of Saint Martin de Porres.
[7] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1030.
[8] Ibid., 1032. Saint John Chrysostom, Homily
in I Corinthians 41:5.
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