Magnifying Glass of God

Love your Lord, your God,

with all your mind,

with all your soul,

with all your heart,

and with all your strength.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

This is the greatest commandment.

This is the Jewish law that is called the “Shema.”

These words of Shema are often written on a little piece of paper,

rolled up in a scroll, and then placed inside a mezuzah,

which is hung on the doorposts of Orthodox Jewish homes.

When they pray, they tie it to their forearms

and tie it to their heads, to remind them,

put it before their head,

before their mind,

before their strength.

All the time it reminds them that they are called to

love the Lord your God at all times.

It is a physical reminder of what they are called to do.

It is self-evident, as believers, to love the Lord our God

who has already created us.

But it is a struggle.

For some reason, we do not know quite why

but we struggle with this.

Intellectually we get it, but we find it hard to implement.

We have a number of people in our parish

doing these Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Living called SEEL.

And this is a commitment to pray every day for an hour

and then go through a very systematic approach,

the spiritual exercises for 30 weeks.

We will continue doing this for the next 26 weeks.

At this stage, we are in the part where we are trying

to really internalize that God loves us,

that God loves us for who we are,

not for what we do,

not for what we have,

not for the title,

not for our job,

but for who we are: a child of God.

Yes, in the center of our being we are children of God,

created in the image and likeness of our God.

And again, intellectually that is really easy to get.

But for some reason we find it hard to internalize.

We call them barriers.

Saint Ignatius calls them spiritual attachments

or disordered attachments or disordered desires.

Disorder is a technical word referring to the order that is for our soul.

So what is good for our soul is good order

and therefore disordered is not good for our soul.

In this case, what is it that is attaching to us

or we attach to that holds us back from receiving that love from God?

It might be anxieties, it might be fears,

there might be frustrations,

there might be wounds from a past hurt.

Those are the most common ones.

When we were younger, our parents maybe fought

and we internalized that we were to blame,

that we were not loved or that we did not feel their love in the way

that we had hoped or that we needed.

Therefore, we take those feelings and we project them on to God.

We transfer them, so transference becomes a barrier

because then I can not receive from God

because I already have a preconceived notion of God.

Then there is the attachment to things.

Or we get attached to power.

We want to be the CEO, we want to be the one in charge.

We want to be president.

We want to be it, so we can call the shots.

That is a disordered attachment.

Or it could be things.

Obviously we can have a disordered attachment to things

that are ordinarily good such as food, alcohol, even exercise.

Any of these things can hold us in a disordered way.

And the disorder happens when it is no longer good for our soul.

So these are the things that hold us back

from being able to see and to experience our God, who is a god of love.

And then there is this,  

we look for God in all the wrong places.

There is this great story about a man who loses something on the street

and crosses over to the other side of the street

underneath the lamp to start to look for it.

And someone asks, “Why are you looking over here

when you were walking over there?” 

“Well, because the light is over here.”

That is the temptation.

We look in all the wrong places.

Why? Well, because, there is light over there.

I can not see where I lost it.

So we look in all the wrong places.

There is the temptation to do that in our own lives,

we look for God’s love in all the wrong places.

Just look at all the stuff that we hold on to,

the power, wealth, material possessions or the feel goods.

The question is then how do we let go of this?

What do we have to do to get past

this so that we can feel the love of God?

I do not know what else to tell you

other than to say that the first thing we have to do is

to reflect and think about it.

To be honest with ourselves now,

because here is the part, we need God’s grace to allow us

just to love him because of our limited human capacity.

If we could just pause for a moment and reflect

and we take a humble stance and say,

“Lord, I am not sure quite how to do this,

but I do want to receive your love.

I do know I need your love.

So help me face that what is holding me back.

The the attachments, the disordered attachments,

those things, those barriers that have gotten in the way.

Help me to face them and to not fear them.

Help me to shine the light of your grace on them

so that by doing so I can let them go.

And therefore I with open hands can receive your love.”

When we receive that love,

when we recognize that we are really loved,

then we can do the other parts of this commandment that Jesus gives.

We can love ourselves and then we can love others.

But unless we receive that love and feel loved,

we are never going to be able to love ourselves.

And therefore we are never really gonna be able to love others.

That is the fundamental foundational step of what we have to go through.

Unless we go through that gate,

the other gates will not get open.

We have to be honest about that.

That is our work, my friends.

And I notice some of you say,

“Oh yeah, like I know that God’s love.”

But that is in your head and not your heart.

Do we really understand that we are loved by God,

not for what we do, not what we have, not what we have contributed?

Not even the good works that we do,

but that we are created in his image,

in his likeness, and that we are loved from the beginning of creation.

We do not do anything to receive that.

I am telling you, my friends,

once we feel that in inside our hearts,

then it changes everything and

we feel like we can take on the whole world,

because then really nothing else matters.

I am going to give you an exercise to finish with

that I think will at least help with this

because that is hard to conceptualize in our head.

So where is there a love when we have felt that way?

And I am going for the adults here,

I am going to suggest that when you first felt loved by your spouse,

it might have been the very first time you met them or shortly thereafter,

and there was some spark that you suddenly said

“No, this is the one, oh, this is the one.

I need to marry her or I need to marry him.

He is it or she is it.

This is it.

I feel different when I am around this person.”

And we have to go back to that moment

because that is the moment that sets you

on to the direction for the rest of your life.

For some of you 50, 60 years plus.

And what a great gift.

Now that is just a tiny sample of what God does for us.

But I am saying just go back to that feeling.

I am trying to get you to that feeling.

And for the boys and girls here,

when you feel loved by your mom or your dad.

There was probably a moment when you were sick

and you were in bed or when you hurt yourself

and something went wrong and

you went to mom or dad and you felt like,

I am not sure if they are going to be mad at me

or they are going to love me here.

And they never blinked,

they just wrapped their arms around you

and loved you. That is the moment right there.

When love is unconditional for you.

That, boys and girls, is a sample of what

God is offering every single one of us.

My friends, that is what we get every time

we come to the Eucharist.

God says that he loves us completely.

So much so that he gives us Jesus Christ in his person.

Now, I want to explain this.

I want to quote Thomas Meron but I have to explain him first.  

When the sun is shining bright,

you can take a magnifying glass and if you get it right,

you can focus the sun and you can burn a piece of paper

or set a piece of paper even on fire right now,

that is what Thomas Merton says.

He says that Jesus Christ is the magnifying lens

which God gives us so that he can focus his love onto our hearts

and set our hearts on fire with his love.

Jesus Christ is the magnifying glass

that focuses the love of God onto our hearts

so it can set our hearts on fire, my friends.

That is what we come to celebrate every time we come to Eucharist;

the focusing of God’s love that came to us,

not just in human person,

but to sacrifice himself and then came back and said,

look, this is who I am.

I give this to you every single time you ask for my love.

But friends, that is the focus that we have to,

we have to think and spend some time reflecting on

how much God loves us in and

through Christ Jesus, the magnifying glass of that love.

So yes…

Love your Lord, your God,

with all your mind,

with all your soul,

with all your heart,

and with all your strength.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

This is the greatest commandment.