Homily

What is the Bible all about? Some people might say it is a book of stories, or it is a book of doctrine and teaching, and both of these things are true. But I think the best way to look at the Bible is to see it as a book of relationships. Relationships between people, and relationships between people and God.

The two are always connected, for God created humanity to know, love and serve Him and enter into eternal life along with Him. And, at the same time, we were also made to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Our relationships with other people either help us to live in this divine vocation or they work against it. So, we see in Genesis that the first damage to relationships comes when Adam and Eve rebel against God's command in favor of their desire to exercise a power as great as God's. And notice that Eve blames the serpent, which puts a blame outside of herself, and Adam blames Eve which puts a serious rupture into his relationship with her. Both of them have broken their relationship with God which is perfectly symbolized by their expulsion from Paradise. And at the same time, they have damaged their relationship with each other.

Maybe you've never thought about it exactly in this way but the whole Bible continues on from there as a great book of relationships: the connections between people, and their connection with God. Right after the story of the Fall we find the story of Cain and Abel. Abel has a greater love for God, and Cain hates him for that, and finally kills him. The Scriptures continue from there. We find the people who love one another and the people who hate one another; the people who love God, and the people who refuse to follow His word. The two can never be separated. We are unable to genuinely love God if we seek to deliberately harm our fellow human beings for personal gain, or out of hatred or envy, or for any unjust cause or reason. The Bible gives us story after story of how people love, or mistreat, or even destroy one another, and of how people love, disobey, or even hate the Lord their God. The Scriptures are not stories of events as much as they are stories of relationships.

So why is it difficult to love God with our whole heart and our whole soul and to love our neighbor as ourselves? It's because we have a love problem. We are often trying to love ourselves first and above all others, even God. This great immaturity in love easily leads us to sin against God and against one another and that sin then fuels our foolish egos. Our failings to love God and our failings to love one another are not always even seen as marks of our immaturity. Sometimes people tell themselves that they are marks of strength and symbols of superior standing. But there is no lasting satisfaction in turning away from God, there is no lasting pleasure in harming others, only a deeper sense of loss and emptiness and alienation from our human vocation. Isn’t that where more and more people find themselves today?

As people in our time continue to abandon God, is it any wonder that they also can find it very easy to abandon honesty, rational thinking, and a genuine concern for their neighbor, even as we are told, “this is for the greater good.” Every new cause in our recent history that comes down the road and is against the law of Christ is proclaimed as important and necessary for the good of other people. For example, we are told that murder in the womb is an action taken for the health of women. Don’t you care about the health of women? Destroying one is saving another. How can you be against saving someone? A child’s life is pitted against its mother’s life. What can be more divisive than that? We see one social movement after another coming at us. Do they actually unite us, or are they only causes that divide us from one another, and even more importantly, separate people from God?

We heard the epistle. It's no wonder St. Paul is ticked off about what is happening with the parish in Corinth where people are dividing themselves into groups and are fighting with each other. Paul doesn't really say much about what they were fighting over, but it's obvious that each faction thought they were better than the other groups. And worst of all when did these factions come into play? When they gathered together to pray! When they came to celebrate the Eucharist! The one time when one should expect they would all be at peace and in a state of grace and unity with God and with one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, is the time where their divisions and sins become most visible. St. Paul is horrified, but I don't think he's surprised. He knows it is easy to turn away from God, even if you consider yourself to be very pious. Didn't he formerly hate Christ? He knows it is easy to turn against your fellow man. Didn't he formerly persecute the Christians? But he also knows that the most important antidote to both of these problems is found in the mystery of the sacrificial love of Christ crucified, and in the sharing of His Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist, which we do, not alone, but with each other.

This should be why we come to Liturgy: to immerse ourselves into Christ crucified, so that we can see in His sacrifice the unending depth of the love He has for us. In seeing that love, may we in turn be tempted to love Him more and better. We come to Liturgy to receive His Body and Blood so that united with Him, we are sustained and fed so that we may, in turn, come to better love our neighbor, even if our neighbor lives in the same house we do.

Breaking apart relationships is often dramatic, but even if it is not, it is so very easy to do. We can see the evils of people trying to set neighbor against neighbor all around us today, especially these last few years. The individual person, or the select specific group—their desires are all that matters. Family, community, nation, Church—none of these are as important as the individual’s desire, the group’s desire, to live as they see fit and get what they want. If you set yourself above or against your neighbor, it’s even easier to drop your relationship with God. If you drop your relationship with God, why should you try to love your neighbor if he or she will not give you what you want? All around us today we can see the work of Satan, who has practiced his destructive craft since the Garden of Eden.

Unlike sin and disruption, growth in strengthening our relationship with God and our neighbor is rarely dramatic and explosive. Building up our union with God and neighbor, especially through our participation in the Liturgy, is not as easy as tearing them down. If we could truly see the grace available for us here to grow in both of these relationships, I think we would be amazed. But even if we can only come with the eyes of faith, that should be enough to encourage us to invest ourselves in this Holy Liturgy here, not in the self-centered way that St. Paul’s Corinthians were doing, but instead to invest our lives more deeply in the love of Christ, so that we can see ourselves and our relationships in the light of His love. Let us pray today with our whole soul and with our whole mind for this.