HOMILY LENT WEEK 03 05 – Year II
Speaking of Hymns to God’s Mercy:
Optional Memorial of St. John of God
(Ho 14:1-9; Ps 81; Mk 12:28-34)
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“Only he who has been touched and caressed by the tenderness of God’s mercy really knows the Lord.”
That comment by Pope Francis invites us to see today’s readings as hymns to God’s mercy, sung by God, and to fall into the merciful hands of the living and loving God, the “fathomless net of God’s mercy,” as Richard Rohr puts it.
Early in the Jubilee Year, Pope Francis launched a book-length interview titled The Name of God is Mercy. In it he highlights the extravagant pervasiveness of mercy as well as the need to encounter mercy so as to practice it. There Pope Francis insists “God does not want anyone to be lost. God’s mercy is infinitely greater than our sins; his medicine is infinitely stronger than the illnesses that we have to heal.” Without that mercy we do not really know the Lord. “Only he who has been touched and caressed by the tenderness of his mercy really knows the Lord.” So, for Pope Francis, the place we encounter God’s mercy best is through our sins.
The readings bring to mind the Song of Songs, as Hosea has God singing a song of God’s mercy, calling for repentance, expressing love for God’s sinful people. Psalm 81 especially is similar to the Song of Songs – a long intimate hymn to God’s longing for God’s people.
In the Gospel, Jesus teaches us the Great Commandment that is all about love and that responds to our deepest human need to be loved, to belong and to be valued.
It was a common practice in Jesus’ time to ask a rabbi to identify the central precept of the Law. Thus, Jesus is asked, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” He gave his famous answer: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Reaching back to Leviticus 18:19, he lifts an obscure commandment buried there, easily overlooked, and elevates it to an equal status with the great Shema of Israel – loving God with our whole being. From now on, it is just as important to love others as we love ourselves, as it is to love God. That constitutes some of the “newness” of the teachings of Jesus.
What is very interesting is the comment of the scribe to the answer Jesus puts forward in responding to the scribe’s question. Unlike all the other religious leaders so hostile to Jesus, this scribe “gets it” – he perhaps intuits the deeper meaning of Jesus’ whole ministry and teaching – that love trumps law, mercy trumps raw justice, relationship trumps rules and regulations, the heart trumps proper ritual, or as he puts it, “Love is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” What is paramount in God’s view is for God’s people to have an intimate relationship with God and one of genuine love, caring and sharing of life with others. That would include a faith-filled, intimate relationship with Jesus. Ultimately, the relationship we have with Jesus is the relationship we will have with God, the Father of us all.
In the end, all of religion is finally about awakening the deepest desire of the heart and directing it toward God; it is about the ordering of love toward that which is most worthy of love. But this love of God carries, Jesus says, as a necessary implication, compassion for one’s fellow human beings.
Why are the two commandments so tightly linked? Because of who Jesus is. Christ is not simply a human being, and he is not simply God; rather, he is the God-man, the one in whose person divinity and humanity meet. Therefore, it is impossible to love him as God without loving the humanity that he has embraced. The greatest commandment is, therefore, an indirect Christology, a flowing out of the reality of the Son of God become the Word made flesh.
The recent crisis of the Caronavirus Covid-19 brought out both the worst in people (taking advantage of the crisis to scam others for the sake of financial gain) and the best in people. That “best” can be seen in the phenomenon becoming known as “caremongering” – people randomly practicing acts of kindness like shopping for others, doing their errands, and dropping off food for those in need. That was living the gospel for today.
St John of God
Today the church honours St John of God who was born in Portugal on Marcy 8th, 1495. He worked as a soldier of fortune, an overseer of slaves, a shepherd, a crusader, a bodyguard and a peddler. Wracked with guilt over his wasted life, he sought the counsel of John of Avila, who helped him dedicate himself to the care of the sick and the poor, living out the ideal of fasting Isaiah presents today. Others joined him and they became known as the Order of Brothers Hospitallers or Brothers of St John of the God. John died on his birthday in 1550 and was canonized in 1690. He is a patron of hospitals and the sick.
The Eucharist is our hymn of love in response to God’s love for us, inviting us to fall into the merciful hands of the living and loving God, the fathomless net of God’s mercy.
