24 September 2018
Monday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
“To anyone who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he seems to have will be taken away” (Lk 8:18b). This saying of Jesus, which appears in all of the synoptic gospels, understandably provokes stupefaction for many people today, as it undoubtedly did in Jesus’ time. What sort of God gives more to those who have, and takes away from those who do not have? Can this truly be a God of love?
A man whom I know was a rising star while in university. He was admired among his peers, who elected him to a top leadership position in a noted civic organization. This young man was praised not only for his ability to organize and inspire his peers, but also for his ethical principals on leading issues of concern to the broader human community and his moral conduct in his dealings with others. At the same time, this man found himself more and more estranged from God and the Church. The scriptures made demands upon him that seemed antiquated and irrelevant, and the Church itself seemed hypocritical and out of touch. He knew he would be more praised for leaving the Church than for remaining in it and he drifted away. Nonetheless, this young man occasionally went to Mass where he would quietly repeat, almost as a mantra, “please help me to forgive, so that I might be forgiven.” He was not prepared to give up the pleasant, sensual life away from God that he had built for himself and live according to God’s commands, but he knew that, behind the façade of being “a good guy,” there was an underlying egoism that underpinned his “love of humanity.” He sensed, in some inchoate way, that he was a sinner, but since he knew himself incapable of abandoning his sin, he at least asked for the grace to forgive, so that, as the “Our Father” promises, he might be forgiven.
This young man seemed to have a great love that underpinned his social engagement, but it was vitiated by his own “needs” which, to him, justified the hidden selfish edge (i.e. concupiscence) of his love. But when this young man encountered the genuinely un-self-seeking Love that Jesus had for him, the man realized that the “love” that he had for his neighbour had been falsified the whole time. The Lord “took away” from the young man the notion that he loved truly. As the young man “started over” after his conversion, leaving behind all of his false loves, his simple prayer in Mass was answered. He discovered that with the help of this true Love that had been given him, he could finally forgive those who had sinned against him and begin to love in a truly disinterested way. If the love that the young man seemed to have had not been taken away, he would never have received the true Love to which the Lord has added infinitely more since then. May we, too, ask for the grace to have taken away from us what we only seem to have, so that we might receive that which God alone can give, to which God promises to add infinitely more.