FOR YEARS I HAVE had the experience of discovering that as I am delivering a homily, I am not just preaching to the congregation, but also to myself. I think that without intending to do so, I deliver homilies that I feel I need to hear.
In the last month or two, I have also had the feeling that I am repeating myself in my Sunday homilies. No parishioner has pointed this out to me – at least not yet. Still, as I am preparing the Sunday homily, I wonder if what I am preparing is very similar to what I said in the previous Sunday’s homily. I am going to check this out with some parishioners who I think will be honest with me.
Why I mention this here is that I found “my message” succinctly stated by David Brooks’ in his terrific book “The Road to Character”: “It’s surprisingly difficult to receive a love that feels unearned. But once you accept the fact that you are accepted, there is a great desire to go meet this love and reciprocate this gift.”
Pure Gift
In my recent homilies, I have been stressing that we don’t have to win, earn or merit God’s love for us. It is a gift but we should respond to that gift with our own love.
This insight is one of a seemingly countless number of insights in Brooks’ book. I think all 10 chapters are good but one or two especially interest me. One of these is “Ordered Love,” the chapter in which Brooks writes about St. Augustine.
Twenty pages into the chapter, he offers a summary of what he has pointed out earlier in the chapter about Augustine’s road to character, starting with Augustine’s journey into the depths of his own consciousness. Brooks writes the following:
“…it starts with the dive inside to see the vastness of the inner cosmos. The inward dive leads outward, toward an awareness of external truth and God. That leads to humility as one feels small in contrast to the almighty. That leads to a posture of surrender, of self-emptying, as one makes space for God. That opens the way for you to receive God’s grace. That gift arouses an immense feeling of gratitude, a desire to love back, to give back and to delight. That in turn awakens vast energies. Over the centuries many people have been powerfully motivated to delight God. This motivation has been as powerful as the other great motivations, the desire for money, fame, and power.
“The genius of this conception is that as people become more dependent on God, their capacity for ambition and action increases. Dependency doesn’t breed passivity; it breeds energy and accomplishment.”
There is so much wisdom in those words that I almost don’t know how to begin to comment on them. Brooks has articulated some truths that I have been trying to incorporate deeply into my life. I think many, if not most believers, try to incorporate them.
Entering deeply into yourself, trying to know yourself at the deepest level and trying to know who you really are is a wonderful way of opening yourself to the mystery of God and God’s love, which surrounds us.
Surrendering to God
God’s love is always available to us, but by surrendering to God in a love commitment we allow that love to transform us, to shape us, paradoxically to help us to be free. I have come to believe that the holiest people in the world are also the freest. God’s love does not force us or determine us or make us do any particular action. Though it is a profound mystery, in relation to our human choices God’s involvement is as a love-cause. Being loved enables the beloved to be free. If this is true of human interpersonal love, it is much more profoundly true of God’s love for us.
The caricature that people who depend on God become passive is simply that – a caricature. The opposite seems to be true. Their trust in God seems to open new meanings for them and leads them to renew and deepen their commitment to God and to other human beings.
As Brooks points out, people who become more dependent on God increase in activity and energy. They seem to become more alive. People who know them may marvel at their zest for living and their capacity for loving.
St. Augustine is a great example of someone whose love for God energized him.
Father Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).