Love is Primary Rules are Secondary

In our Catholic Faith, and I have said this before, one of the most important words is the word, “And.”  We use it often, for instance:

Scripture and Tradition

Faith and Reason or Religion and Science

Faith and Works

Divine Providence and Free Will

Mercy and Justice

Relationship and Commandments

There is not enough time to go into each one, but know that within Catholicism there is a great balance, a mean if you will between two extremes, for example it would sound extreme to us if a person said you are saved by works alone, since that would do harm to Christ’s sacrifice, to his life’s purpose, if someone said you are saved by faith alone (as some do) that would also be extreme since it reduces man to a non-participant and almost making him non-human, no more than a robot, so the answer is somewhere in the middle.  Even so it is usually the first word in the phrase that carries just a little but more weight.

As important as Sacred Tradition is the Scriptures remain the norm of the Church, its principal player.  In salvation though we participate, God remains the principal player.  Using a sports analogy, the first word in the phrase would be the Quarterback, he leads, and the secondary word in the phrase would be the center.  The Quarterback is the principal player, but the center is needed.

Why do I bring this all up?  I bring it up to tell you that God’s mercy is bountiful, enduring, eternal and the principal player when it comes to our relationship with him.  Folks, it comes down to love.

There is the reality of sin and justice, and trust me, they are in the forefront of my mind as I know it is in yours as well, that’s what a good Christian does in order to keep a watchful eye on their efforts to live virtuously.  But that is the secondary player, the secondary word, the first Word, the principal player is God’s “mercy.”

St. Paul was direct and clear, “Brothers and sisters:  God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ — by grace you have been saved . . .” My friends, “even when we were dead in our sins,” Jesus was still pouring out his mercy.  Listen, we did not deserve this mercy, by justice we deserved eternal damnation, but God decided otherwise, going after His wayward children, even when we scorned him, shook our fists at him, even when we crucified him, he came running towards us to forgive and to heal us.  Think of what that means!

There is a contingent of Catholics who just simply love the rules, they want everything black and white and sadly have confused the order of the words.  Relationship and Commandments, that is the right order, both again very important, but “relationship” is the principal player, relationship is the Quarterback.  The Commandments, the rules, again are important, but secondary.  There is that contingent that wants us to believe that it is Commandments and Relationships, with commandments being the principal player.  They judge their own and others relationship by the rules, i.e. have you followed this, have you avoided that, do you follow Church teaching, etc.  My friends, when one is converted, born again (baptized), comes back to faith, they always come back to a person first and foremost, that person is God and in the natural process through love one is moved to a life of holiness even while still sinning.  Everyone sins and if their love was judged by the rules, no one my dear friends would enter heaven, no not even one!  We are judged by love and relationship (and if we truly love we fight hard to be virtuous).

The Gospel confirms that mercy, relationship, and love are the primary words, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  Dear Friends, God did not send his Son into the World to bring it rules nor did he send him into the world to simply judge it, but to save it.

This idea of being loved is sometimes hard to accept and for many reasons, but on an individual level we sometimes find it hard to accept because we judge ourselves harsher and more stringent than God ever would.  We simply either don’t comprehend the depth of this love or sometimes we just reject it because we feel unworthy.  There is something in our lives that keeps us from being healed all the way.  I want you to all know that you are loved, loved, and loved beyond your wildest comprehension.  I have pointed to the cross before to show you how much you are loved, that Jesus would allow himself to be scourged, tortured, made to carry a cross, and then to be nailed to it!  My goodness, who in their right mind would do something like that for people who turned their backs on him?  The only thing that would make someone do something like that is that they were driven by a love so deep it had no boundaries or depths, or heights, but was eternal.

If you leave with one thing, one thought from here today, and again I am not throwing the rules out the window, the rules help us, but it is God’s love for us that lifts us on high.  Remember you are “LOVED!”  You have a great worth, value, dignity, sacredness and God is madly in love with each and every one of you and His love has no limits.  He would do anything to share with and give you that love, even if it meant dying for you!  And TRUST ME HE DIDN'T DO THAT TO FOLLOW RULES!

Zeal For Your House

“Zeal for your house will consume me.”  These were the words that the Apostles recalled when Jesus overturned the money tables and drove them all out of the Temple.  Jesus was cleaning up the house!  This “cleaning house” serves two purposes, one) clean up God’s temple, which we now call the Church and two) clean out your own temple, the temple of you.  You see, you cannot have one without the other.

Let’s begin with our own temples.  How can they be cleaned out?  For starters, especially during Lent we are asked to make a good inventory of ourselves.  We are to do so with prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.  By looking deep within we are to acknowledge those areas of weakness in our lives, but I will go even deeper, we are to go into the depths of our soul and look at all the pain, anger, and sadness we may harbor towards ourselves, towards another or some deep rooted vice which we may not even recognize any longer and come face to face with it.

In doing so, in that honesty we can begin to be healed.  Cleaning our house is not easy, sometimes it takes brutal honesty.  We cannot blame our vices, misgivings, issues, on any one, not our spouses, our siblings, our friends, our parents, or someone who may have hurt us deeply.  We have free will and in that free will God allows us to make choices and though someone may have influenced those choices we need to get past them, remember we stand alone before God and answer to Him alone as well.

People will sometimes look to others as the one or ones that have to fix their issues or in the worst case make someone else their messiah, i.e. their husband, their wife, their child, their friend.  Cleaning house says, “No sir, look within, acknowledge your own faults and take responsibility.”  There is no room in the kingdom of God for shirkers, for blame casters, or unforgivers.”  I know there is no such word as “unforgivers,” but you know what I mean.

Lent is the time to clean up one’s house and to do so with humility and trust in the Good Lord.  The other house we have to clean up is this one, our church.  Yes, clean it up!  I don’t mean go and get your brooms and mops, but rather, again that deep reflection in which we ask, “are being compassionate, focusing on relationship, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, being inviting; all of us are responsible for God’s house.  I love what Pope Francis is doing in cleaning up the place.  He has challenged all priests and religious to live a humble life, he has challenged the laity to remember those in need; he has brought great practical application to theology and has shifted our focus back towards relationships, primarily relationship with God!  The Pope is cleaning the house literally and figuratively.  He is asking us to do the same.

There are many ways we can clean the house, first we must have that same zeal that our Lord has for his house.  We have to drive out those things that hold us back, our own comforts, and perceived privileges, lack of charity, our self-righteousness, and most of all any sin that hinders growth to the body.  The people in Jesus’ time became complacent, they allowed for things in the Temple that should never have been allowed, selling and trading of goods, not taking care of the widow, the orphan, or the down trodden, they lost their focus.  Cleaning house means to regain that focus and in doing so things get clearer.

Both, cleaning my house and the church are not easy.  With the Lord’s help, with his manifold grace we can do both.  Starting right here with me, it must start there and hopefully it becomes contagious and continues with all of us.  What do they say, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”  I am sure it wasn’t just about what kind of skin soap you use or what detergent you use, but rather the cleanliness that is deep down within our own temples and what is deep down in the Temple in which we stand right now.  Together then, as this season of Lent continues, pray, “that the zeal for our house consumes us!”  AMEN!  FJ