BE OF THE SAME MIND

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY

St. Paul’s Epistle today starts out by asking us to “be of the same mind one toward another.”  That sounds very nice on the face of it, doesn’t it?  To me, it conjures up images of hippies sitting round the campfire on a beach in California, smoking pot and singing Kum Ba Yah.  And of course, nothing could be further from what the good St. Paul is asking of us. 

Since Vatican II, the highlight of the “Mass” isn’t the consecration any more.  The big moment comes later on after the Our Father when the person presiding over the service asks everyone to give each other the kiss of peace.  Nowhere is the new church better summed up than in the bedlam that follows.  And nowhere is the hypocrisy of modernism more clearly displayed than in the scene of handshaking and back-slapping that pretends to show how much we love our neighbor, but in reality is a manifestation of how little we love God.

If you think about it, love of neighbor is the second of the two great commandments, always subordinate to and dependent upon the love of God first and foremost.  In fact, we cannot fail to love our neighbor if we truly love God.  And how do we show our love for God?  By keeping his commandments.  At the Last Supper, when Christ commanded us to “Do this in remembrance of me,” he was not working the room, shaking hands with everyone from St. Peter to Judas.  He certainly loved all his apostles, but it cannot be said they were all of “one mind one toward another.”  The one would deny him three times and the other betray him for thirty pieces of silver, so the degree of love they or any of the other apostles had toward our Lord could never be said to equal the love he had for them.  

His love was the true love of sacrifice.  He was willing to die for them and for us.  Are we so ready to die for our neighbor?  How shallow is the display of “love” at the new Mass!  The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the true Mass, has been offered, without interruption for two thousand years.  It is our reminder that the love of our Lord Jesus Christ is an eternal love, and we are commanded to return this sacrificial love in the true Mass, not abolish it. 

We are not of one mind with the enemies of God who wish to take this Mass away from us, and we don’t need to apologize to St. Paul for not being of one mind!  After all, he goes on to say this: “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.”  By all means, fight what they’re trying to do.  But if it’s possible for us to remain at peace with our neighbor, even the neighbor who hates our values and everything we stand for, then we should tolerate their presence among us, partly for the sake of the common good but more so, because they are still God’s children—his enemies, perhaps, but nevertheless enemies that he forgave on Calvary, enemies he died for.  Who are we, then, to deny them true Christian love, no matter how difficult it might be for us to summon up.

“Recompense to no man evil for evil,” says St. Paul.  “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him to drink.”  The evil he does is ultimately between him and God, and God has promised to take care of things in the end—“Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”  Meanwhile, we are to love our enemies, by praying for them, making acts of reparation for them, and in short, by acts of loving sacrifice as befits a follower of Christ.