Homilist Fr. John Robert Skeldon Job asks in today’s first reading whether “…man’s life on earth [is] a drudgery? Are not his days those of hirelings? He is a slave who longs for the shade, a hireling who waits for his wages. So I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me.” I dare not go on any more, lest we all pull out our Pro-zac. Is Job right? Is this the lot of humanity? The psalmist has another way of asking these questions: “How long, O Lord, how long?” I submit that a lot of human life can be this, especially human life lived apart from love, from relationship, from communion with God and one another. Simon’s mother-in-law is sick, lonely, suffering until touched by—put into relationship with—Jesus. Her response to that in-breaking of love (charity) into her life: service (diakonia)—the coming out of oneself to and for the other. Life for her might have been, in Job’s words, a drudgery, misery, not seeing happiness again. But, with the touch of Jesus—the presence of God made flesh—she was brought to service, communion, relationship: the opposite of loneliness. One can get the sense that all these poor, seemingly miserable, lonely wretches want this touch; they want to be in communion again: “…they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons. The whole town was gathered at his door.” So many of us long for that in-breaking in our lives: to know…to know at the core that we are loved and are capable of loving, that it is not all drudgery and misery and loneliness. Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict—being true to his name tosay the good—has issued a profound statement on that which is our deepest desire: love. In his first encyclical letter—entitled Deus Caritas Est, God is love—he presents for the world’s reflection the essence of what can heal our drudgery, misery and loneliness. Taking its title from the passage in the first letter of John where God’s essence is simply yet profoundly predicated as love (1 John 4:16), the Pope writes that “[b]eing Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but an encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (DCE, 1). Like the encounter Simon’s mother-in-law or any of those sick and possessed who were brought to Jesus experienced in relationship to him; or how we encounter something beyond ourselves in another’s relationship with us. (Kinky Friedman: Money can buy a dog, but only love’ll make him wag his tail.) “Since God has first loved us, love is no longer a mere ‘command’; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us” (DCE, 1). We want to love back; we want to give back; we want to serve. In writing this encyclical letter, the Pope sets out to reflect on what love—and in particular a Christian understanding of love—is, and then to see how it is made concrete and real in the life of the people that call themselves the Church (ekklesia—the ones called out). He notes in his reflection on the terms eros—a seeking love—and agape—a giving love—that God seeks after us as much as we seek after him. But “…God’s eros (love) for man is also totally agape” (DCE, 10). In other words, God’s love seeks after us precisely to give to us. It is well worth quoting this paragraph to capture its sublime beauty, and because he quotes one of Fr. Kelly’s favorite passages of scripture: Pope Benedict writes, “It is precisely at this point that God is revealed to be God and not man:…. God's passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice. Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the mystery of the Cross: so great is God's love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice and love” (DCE, 10). If such a God seeks after us, then it is constitutive that we respond in the same way, as love of God and love of neighbor—for us who call ourselves Christian—are inextricably linked. This is how the world knows that life is not justdrudgery, misery, not seeing happiness again. We incarnate that love of God out toward others. At the National Prayer Breakfast this week in Washington, the Irish singer Bono spoke—as you know he has been a strong presence for aiding developing nations in Africa and for combating poverty and illnesses, especially AIDS. His address really brought home these ideas of Pope Benedict. He related the story of meeting a certain wise man. He said: “…I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord’s blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song, look after it. I have a family, please look after them. I have this crazy idea… And the wise man said: stop. He said, stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing—because it’s already blessed.” What is God doing? God is loving the socks off of you and me and all humanity. He is seeking after us (eros) so to give (agape) to us his very life and presence. He is blessing humanity because he is loving humanity. Are we going to continue in that service (diakonia) of blessing—saying the good—to those who so desperately want to know that it is not all drudgery, misery and not seeing happiness again. Paul, as opposed to Job, sees everything as opportunity. “…I have made myself a slave to all so as to win over as many as possible. To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak. I have become all things to all, to save at least some. All this I do for the sake of the Gospel, so that I too may have a share in it.” Pope Benedict encapsulates this powerfully: “Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own. Communion draws me out of myself towards him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians” (DCE, 14). So the existential choice is placed before us: Do we wallow in drudgery, misery, and not seeing happiness again;or do we allow ourselves to be loved so that we may move from loneliness to loveliness out to communion with God and others?
How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel! ... My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst (Hos 11:8-9).