Sunday 31 (B-2006):
All and wholly for Jesus
Dt. 6:2-6 &
Mk. 12:28b-34
“All your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength.”
God’s claim on each of us is total.
Therefore, his claim on all of us as a race is
likewise total.
No aspect of our individual existence –
none!- or of our social existence can claim for itself a final purpose or meaning
other than God.
Church and State are autonomous, as Christ himself
instituted them to be. But the State, too, is intended by God to help us on our way to him.
It cannot therefore be absolutely autonomous from God. Its laws must respect the moral law
of God written universally in the heart of every human being.
Otherwise it fails in its proper purpose and hinders,
rather than helps, the human being in the attainment of his or her destiny.
Anything and everything human ultimately belongs
to God.
Only that which is inhuman in us, especially sin, is not his, and that is because, in the end, it is not really ours either.
The great St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the
Jesuits, puts it this way:
“The human being has been created to praise, reverence and serve our Lord God, thereby saving his or her soul. Everything else on earth has been created for the sake of the human being, to help each achieve the purpose for which he or
she has been created. So it follows that each has to use them as far as they help, and abstain from them where they hinder
his or her purpose” (Spiritual Exercises, n.23).
This is the fundamental, the foundational, truth of human existence,
whether each person recognizes it or not, has heard of it or not.
Certainly, for a time, any human person, any culture
or civilization, can live as if this were not true.
But eventually, when the horizon of death approaches
each person and history itself, the love of the God who created us all will return as the judge of how we have lived and of
who we have therefore become.
As human beings, but especially as believers, we should at least try
to keep this bigger perspective in mind when we examine what goes on in the world and in the Church around us.
I know very well that the demands of daily life
can so absorb us that we prefer to leave the bigger picture to someone else.
But it is part of our vocation as Catholics to
let our faith in what is ultimate, final and lasting in human life form the way we live now and the contributions we make,
even professionally, even politically.
By the opinions we express, the priorities we
establish and the decisions we take, we can influence others to look at life with the most authentic perspective.
Christ’s total claim on us is not something
which inhibits our freedom.
On the contrary, it liberates our freedom from
the fragmentation and pettiness of much of modern life.
You don’t invest much of your freedom in
choosing between one type of SUV and another.
It’s nice to be able to choose which house
you want, what school you want for the kids and even what job you will take.
But all of these choices usually (but not always)
remain more or less at a superficial level.
A deeper investment of freedom is involved when
you choose whether or not to remain faithful to your spouse, whether or not to forgive a long lost relative or friend, whether
or not to work harder at a life of prayer and a deeper commitment to God, whether or not to allow the life of your family,
neighborhood or country to be taken in one direction or another by political leaders.
The higher the value involved in the decision
you take, the greater the investment of your freedom.
If there is no true value involved in any decision
you take, then you raise the question as to whether you are free at all.
Therefore, when your decisions regard ultimate
values, you not only exercise your freedom more fully, but you give it substance,
you shape it, color it, give it tone and texture: yes, you define it and even fulfill it.
There can in the end be no greater claim on human
freedom, no greater value, than the claim made by Jesus in the Gospel.
It is the claim to the totality of the human being.
It is the claim, not just on an hour of your time
on Sunday, not just on grace before meals, not just on what name you give when asked what your religion is.
No, it is the claim on you, on your very self, on all
you very self, on all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.
Jesus asks each of us to surrender our very selves
to him; in such a way that whatever we do or say, wherever we are, whatever our choice of work, profession or vocation, whether
we are wealthy or poor, sick or healthy, young or old, we do it all, we live it all, we give it all for Jesus’ sweet
sake.
People cast themselves about wondering and worrying what life is about,
what the world is coming to, what it all means.
Jesus does not require us to come up with the
meaning of life, to sort it all out for ourselves, to reach the perfect mathematical solution to “life.”
He gives
us the meaning. He is the meaning in person.
Science will not outwit Christ. Science is most
surely his gift, and it is good unless human folly abuses it.
The wisdom of life’s meaning does not lie
in some long lost riddle or yet to be found chemical element.
No ideology, no philosophy, no artistic mysticism
“has the solution.”
Christ asks of us only one thing that we may find
meaning, fulfillment and peace: that we love him with all we are and have because he loved us first with all he is and has.
It was a love which shone forth at the dawn of
creation.
After its light was darkened by the sin of mankind,
it shone forth again, this time never more to be darkened, on the Cross of the Son of God.
We must learn to fix our gaze, the gaze of the
foundations of our very souls, upon that Cross.
Upon it hang the wisdom, the holiness, the strength
and the love which give final meaning to all human history and to every single human being that has walked, now walks and
will ever walk upon the earth.
There can, in the end, be no partial responses
to the Cross.
We may dilly dally early on in life, although
it would be better if we didn’t.
But come the final showdown for all of us, it’s
either a total yes or a total no; it’s either with all our heart, soul, mind
and strength, or with none of it.
During this month of November, when the Church
invites us to focus on the last things, that is, death, judgment, heaven and hell, as well as on purgatory, we need to take
a little time to stop and examine the course of our lives in the presence of Jesus.
Stop! Get off the merry-go-round of life! Take
a deep breathe! And ask: where am I going? Who or what am I becoming? Is this really the Lord’s way for me?
It’s the time to cut our losses, to correct
our trajectory, to shrug off the excesses, to blow away the cobwebs and, with all the saints and holy souls rooting for us,
to pick up again a steady pace in running towards Jesus, the origin and the destiny of our very existence.
It is time to fan into a flame our passion for
Jesus.
Let me end with a prayer of self-offering in which St. Ignatius gives
expression to his passion for Jesus, and which I personally use on receiving Holy Communion and at other moments of uncertainty
in my life:
“Take, Lord, receive my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
all I am and all I have.
You have given all to me.
Now I return it that you may dispose of it wholly,
according to your will.
Give me only your love and your grace.
These are enough for me.
I ask for nothing more.”
Msgr.
Peter Magee
Sunday,
November 5th, 2006
Annunciation,
DC: 8.30 am
