LOVING IN DEED AND TRUTH

A SERMON FOR THE SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF CORPUS CHRISTI

Life’s tough.  We all feel the pinch at some point.  This current year has been especially hard on many people: businesses have been forced to close and a record number have been driven into undeserved unemployment.  Some businesses were hurt so badly that they cannot recover and have closed permanently.  We can only hope that the harm done to individual workers will not be so drastic, and that all may find jobs when the time comes.  Meanwhile, people are hurting, and as Catholics we cannot turn a blind eye to them.

In today’s Epistle, St. John asks the following very blunt question:  “Whoso hath this world’s good” (in other words, who amongst us are still doing okay financially, in spite of this current crisis), “and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up the bowels of compassion from him: how dwelleth the love of God in him?”  It’s a rhetorical question because the answer is quite obvious.  The love of God does not dwell in those who refuse charity to those in need.  We sin against the second of the two great commandments when we do not love our neighbor as ourselves.  It’s quite straightforward, but sometimes we prefer to forget about this commandment because it is an inconvenient reminder of our duty as we lead our nice, smug little lives, where we sit back like Ebenezer Scrooge, counting our money, surveying our goods and property, and spending our lives worrying that maybe somebody might take it from us.

Thus it is that on this Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi, when we make our prayers to Christ truly present amongst us in the Blessed Sacrament, we waste our time and our prayers are truly worthless, if we do not remember the words of our Saviour when he described how he will one day judge us.  The day when he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left, and shall say to the sheep, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”  You all remember, I’m sure, how the righteous replied?  Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?  Or naked, and clothed thee?  And so on.  The words of Christ our Judge should ring in our ears today: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

So let’s not pretend our prayers to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament have any merit if we ignore the needs of our neighbor.  Because the love of God does not dwell in us if we do not love our neighbor.  To love our neighbor is to love our blessed Lord himself.  After all, our Lord was and still is our neighbor, dwelling in our midst in this Blessed Sacrament.  We must see our neighbor in that Blessed Sacrament, not because our neighbor is God, but because God is our neighbor.  Our real love for God is not made with our prayers, with our tongue, but as St. John says, “in deed and in truth.”  And if we truly love our brethren in deed and truth, we shall know, he tells us, “that we have passed from death unto life.”

This has been the practice of the Church throughout the ages.  How many of our saints gave away all they possessed to the poor?  How many saintly kings and queens, how many of the rich who had an abundance of the goods of this world, loved to give alms to those in need?  Think of St. Martin, giving his cloak to the beggar, or St. Wenceslas tramping through the snow to bring logs for his poor peasants to burn during the cold winter nights.  Or St. Lawrence, giving away all the Church’s treasures to the poor rather than into the hands of the pagan Emperor.  All acts of kindness and Christian charity.  These holy men and women were not saints because they gave alms to the poor.  They gave alms because they were saints.  They didn’t love their neighbor to score points with God.  They did so because they saw God in their neighbor—as we should, no matter how unpleasant some of those neighbors may seem!

There’s a reason the Blessed Sacrament is called the Sacrament of Love.  It’s not the reason our Novus Ordo brethren think, because they have lost their understanding of what “love” is.  It is not the lovey-dovey huggy-kissy love where they slobber all over each other for the “sign of peace” at Mass.  That’s not love.  Love is not the exhibition of our own sentimental emotions.  Love is where we put the needs of others above our own needs.  The sacrifice of our time, our efforts, and yes, our money too when it’s needed.  The love that our Lord talks about when he commands us to love our neighbor is not the love of fellowship but the love of sacrifice, and what greater sacrifice has their ever been than when our Lord offered up his own body, the Corpus Christi, to his heavenly Father?

We can’t love God if we don’t love our neighbor.  As our Epistle today tells us, “He that loveth not his brother abideth in death; whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.”  So when we whisper our prayers to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament this morning, let’s make sure we whisper them for our neighbors as ourselves.  Let’s make sure we are ready to make those sacrifices for them as soon as we know of their needs.  “Let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”