Jesus Wants All of Our Love, Not Just Most of It
Who goes around worshiping idols, anyway? Well, maybe a nice smiling Buddha or a crystal doesn't mean much, really. To most people, the first commandment, which says, "thou shalt not have strange gods before me" is a joke.
Yet I think it is the most frequently broken commandment.
Look at the edges of our faith. The places where we will not accept something that the Church teaches, even though we are enthusiastic about everything else.
The more Michael loved God, the more he loved me, and the more he loved everyone else. Loving God does not take away love, it multiplies it.
Deacon Michael, in this sermons, reminds us that Jesus wants us to be completely committed to Him. God will not be satisfied with obedience to a god which we create for ourselves, even if it is mostly like the real one. He is a jealous God. He wants all of our love and obedience and devotion.
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We are getting ourselves ready for Passion Week, the death of Christ, and in the readings today the monks in the dungeon of the Vatican have left something out again.
If you remember when Joseph (Jacob's son) goes out and caught up with them (his brothers), and they said, "Here comes that master dreamer." That's the first thing when they see Joseph, they're angry.
First, Joseph is the youngest. His father likes him and everything else. And you look at it and you go, okay why would they be wanting to kill him just because, "my father likes him more than me"? You know, sometimes that happens.
The master dreamer. They left out the sequences where this youngest son comes in and says, "Let me tell you my dream! You're all going to be ruled by me! I am the most important one! You're going to be ruled by me!"
And they went, "Bruugh!" And..."the master dreamer."
Joseph is a prefigurement of Christ: what he experienced of being the chosen one, of telling the reality of what's going to happen, being punished, being sent to Egypt, and through all that, being the savior of his people.
Christ is dealing with the Pharisees. Now, He tells them a parable that offends them incredibly. Think in terms of the dream that Joseph told his brothers. He tells them the parable. He knows they're talking.
But why are they upset with Jesus in the first place? What is there that is being said by Jesus that is upsetting the Pharisees? And it comes down to what He says at the very end, "You are not... you are not the chosen people. And you are not listening to the reality of what I am saying. You have allowed yourselves to accumulate so many things that you believe that your wisdom is greater than the wisdom of God. And you're saying, 'Well God is the one that gave us this wisdom and we're smarter, and you are upsetting the apple cart by coming in and saying what you are saying."
And Jesus is saying, "You're going to be replaced by what is coming. You are going to be gone. You're not going to be important because you are the one that is rejecting the stone, the cornerstone of the Church." Our Lord Jesus Christ is being rejected by the Pharisees.
And we have to be very careful in our own lives in this respect. That is that we have to look at the reality of why He was being rejected.
Joseph, the master dreamer, talking about what is coming, perceiving himself as being somebody very important. And Jesus coming in and telling the truth. The reality of the truth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is what is getting them upset.
And do we, in our lives, again, in this Lenten season, this is a part of what we are called to do, do we live our normal lives, without saying, "Well, I'm pretty good. I don't commit sins. I don't do various things."
But the question then is, "Do we believe what Jesus taught us?" Do we really believe what Jesus has taught us or do we, as a matter of convenience, reject some of what He says that is inconvenient, that is something that we don't want to accommodate. And saying, "Well, yes, see, look at all this. I believe in 95%.” We don't want to talk about that extra 5%.
Are we approaching Our Lord like when we go to a Chinese restaurant? It's the old thing of "one from column A, two from column B, one from column C." Are we picking and choosing what we believe? Are we rejecting, just as Joseph's brothers rejected, his dream that was a prophetic dream of what was coming. And are we rejecting the teachings of Christ that led the Pharisees to want to kill Him?
And we have to look at ourselves and to… not analyze, that's what lawyer do… we need to contemplate and meditate on the fact whether that in our lives we are believing in Christ, but we are compartmentalizing certain aspects of what Jesus says and saying, "Ah, that's good, but this stuff really makes me uncomfortable. I'm not really going to get into this wholeheartedly."
The easiest example is "I love my neighbor! They're absolutely wonderful! But... there is this group of people…" described however you want to describe them, "that I just don't really like. I don't really consider them to be my neighbor.”
Ninety-five, ninety-nine percent of everybody in the world is that 5% or 1%. In our lives are we conducting that same kind of compartmentalization… see, I said it that time… that we go, "I can accept everything you say, but this one aspect just really bothers me.
And I'll give you and example. It's one, yeah we are all old enough that it really doesn't matter to us, is the issue of artificial contraception. How many people in their lives say, "Yes, yes, yes, yes... except for that one"?
Are they compartmentalizing and rejecting Jesus? And are they, in doing so, or are we, in doing so, being like the Pharisees and rejecting the stone, the stone that is becoming the cornerstone of the Church?
And in Lent we really need to examine ourselves to see if we have in the recesses this little part where we are going, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. yes! But over there...um, um, I'm not so sure."
That's part of what we have to do as Catholics is examine our consciences, examine our lives, and examine our beliefs in Our Lord Jesus Christ.
March 22, 2019 2