Loving The People Of God

Deacon Michael was half Finnish and he married a Mexican. Both families have experienced discrimination right here in these United States.

Here are some facts about Finns. The Finnish people live in the Arctic Circle. Physically they are like fair-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, tall, strong people with Japanese features. Many different countries have tried to eliminate Finns from the face of the Earth by forced sterilizations, machine-gunned purges, and denial of their essential right to exist and engage in commerce to support their families. The situation of the Finns makes it clear that having light skin does not preclude hatred and endow privilege.

Discrimination exists everywhere. Christ calls us to make sure it doesn’t exist in our world.

Written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

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There is a news story, and I hadn't seen the verification on it: those horrible fires in California where are death tolls are into the hundreds now.  Where the fire came down and swooped down on that city, totally unawares.  They were just caught.  And they were describing the scene and they were saying, you'd go down the street and every house on the street was wiped out except for one house. Or every tree was gone except for one tree.  It looked like almost on a random basis.

And today we have that brought to our attention through women.  We have St. John, and George left this part out, but the first words are "chosen lady". And the saints today are Margaret of Scotland who spent a life of prayer and giving to the poor and taking care of the poor, and Gertrude, the virgin and the great spirituality in loving God and loving man.

And we see in the reading today something very important. It is "anyone who is so ‘progressive’", and it is in quotes, "as not to remain in the teachings of Christ does not have God.  Whoever remains in the teachings has the Father and the Son."

In the gospel, Jesus talks about that, that we don't know when, we are not so smart: we don't know when we are going to die.  We do not know the Second Coming.  We simply don't know.  We do know, and Jesus tells us in very graphic language, when He was talking about how people would be separated: one person in the bed would be there and the other one would be gone.

Where Lord?  Where are they going?  Where are the others going?  And his reply is, "Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather."  He is saying it is not in our physical presence.  It isn't this body, this carnation. It’s going to be nothing.  Where it is, is Heaven.

And the question then becomes, "Well, how do we get to Heaven?"  Realistically, "That's okay, hey, that's great, I mean, I don't want to be vulture food."

Well, how do I gain eternal life?  And we go back to the letter of St. John.  And St. John comes back and says, "The one we've had from the beginning, the commandment we've had from the beginning: let us love one another."  To live our lives loving one another.  And this is something that is so central and so difficult.  So much of what we are called to do in loving God and then the commandment of loving neighbor is both so wonderful and so difficult to do.

I was reading an interesting article, about a young woman in England who is, if I remember correctly, she has an English father and a Jamaican mother, so she is mixed race.  And she was on a rant.  She was totally on a rant.  And she apparently has known a number of men, has boyfriends and what have you.  And she asks this one guy, and apparently the other guys say exactly the same thing.  Men being shallow we tend to say things that we really shouldn't say in retrospect.  And so this one guy she liked, she says, "Why do you like me?"  And she was thinking he's going to say I'm bright and vivacious.  It’s fun to talk to me.  I've got a pretty smile.  I've got all these attributes that make me a wonderful person.  You know, I'm just fun.  People like to be around me.  He says, "Well, I like the fact that you're mixed race."  She says, "You're just a racist!  That's all it is!  You don't care about me!  You don't care about me; you care about what I look like!  What is this?"  And she says this is the new racism that's coming.

Now, I can't relate to it.  I fell in love with the one woman.  She's my definition of beautiful.  You say, "What do you like in beautiful women?"  "Well, they're short.  They generally have long dark hair and they're Hispanic.  But I don't really care beyond that.  They don't have to be Hispanic.  If they're short and have blonde hair and they have a beautiful smile and a wonderful personality and they remind me of my wife, they're beautiful!" 

But her point was that these men were not treating her as a person.  They were treating her as an object.  They, although she obviously wasn't Christian and she wasn't practicing religion or anything else like that, she did not articulate what she was really talking about, "They did not love me as their neighbor.  They did not love me as a child of God.  They did not love me because of who I am, but because of what I look like."

And we have a tendency both in the positive sense and the negative sense to do exactly that. It is, we have a tendency… I'm from a northern European background and, you know, theoretically the big blonde woman who is able to stand in 25 below zero weather in short sleeves, that's what I should like. 

“Oh yeah, give me a choice, do I believe Mayve [she is Polish], or do I believe someone from South Dallas (the black area of town?" That's just wrong.  It intrinsically is wrong.  Because in both senses, if I take a white woman and a black woman and ask them a question, who am I going to believe more?  By making that decision based on what they look like I am treating both of them without love.  I am treating both of them as an object. 

And that is one of the things that we have to not do, to be able to love our neighbor the way Jesus commands us to.  The very key to our salvation is that we have to love everybody as a child of God.  That the intrinsic value of that person is so special that it's what we are called to love. 

And I go back to Fr. Michael and Mary Immaculate Church.  That's what I love about this church, one of the many things, but this is one of the primary things.  We have, I've seen it happen in many churches, and it happened here recently with the Franco-phones from Africa, the ones that speak French.  They will come into the church and at first you might see one man or two men, they'll come.  Depending on the response that they get, the next time the man might bring his wife.  He might bring a girlfriend.  Depending on the response that they get, all of the sudden you have complete families showing up.  And with the Franco-phones, we became the site of a world-wide convention that they were having.  Not because Mary Immaculate Church is the most beautiful church in the diocese of Dallas, but because of the members of the congregation of Mary Immaculate.  Because they welcome them on a direct and immediate basis, saying, "Welcome."

The second time they were seeing them, "Oh, we're so glad you're back.  I remember last time you sat over there at the 10:30 Mass."  They welcomed them.

That's what it means to love your neighbor.  That's what we are called to do.  That's where the separation of the sheep and the goats are.  It's the intrinsic value of our neighbor.  The value that is so exalted by God should be so exalted in us, that our entire salvation can hinge on how we love our neighbor.

And it's the separation that Jesus talks about in the gospel.  In the gospel of Matthew he is very explicit on the basis that it’s done.  He is describing its effect.  But isn't what He's saying really, "You can't tell by exterior appearances."  We have to be able to tell in the reality of how we love our neighbor. And the reality of how we love our neighbor is that we treat each and every one of them not based on skin color, not based on how tall they are, what language they speak or any other characteristic that you might want.  But we love our neighbor based on the fact that they are a creation of God and Jesus died for them on the cross just as He did for us.  And those are the neighbors we are called to love, and those are the neighbors that are our path to spend all eternity in Heaven with God.

November 16, 2018 3