If Ye Love Me…
St. John the Apostle wrote a great deal about the love of God. Amongst his writings are these famous words, “We love him, because he first loved us.” It’s a very simple yet profound sentence, taking us into the realm of cause and effect. What causes us to want to love God? The fact that he loved us first. The reason we should love God is because he loves us. Friday’s feast of the Sacred Heart celebrates the source of God’s love, the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Can there be any question of his love when his Sacred Heart was pierced with a lance on the Cross on which he died for us? Such love has no man ever shown, before or since, a love that is infinite because it is divine. We stand in awe of this love, and our natural reaction is to love God in return.
Just how are we supposed to do that? Let’s recognize first of all that we cannot love God enough. There’s no such thing as too much love when it comes to loving God. The same goes with loving our neighbor, although there, there’s a need to specify the type of love we’re talking about. Giving a child everything it wants is not showing love to that child—it’s spoiling the child and creating a monster who will eventually feel entitled to have everything it wants. Putting your child’s life ahead of your own, however; sacrificing whatever it takes to provide your child with what it absolutely needs, that is true love. Because love is sacrifice. When it comes to God, you cannot spoil God, you cannot make him feel entitled to have things he shouldn’t have. The fact is that God actually IS entitled to everything, simply because he created everything and therefore everything already is his.
So what can we give to the person, or in this case to the God, who already has everything?. Our blessed Lord has told us exactly what to give. Here’s what God wants on Father’s Day and on every other day of the year: he wants our love. The true love of sacrifice. So again I ask, how are we supposed to give that love?
If love is sacrifice, the first thing we are able to do is to attend at and participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This, and this alone, is the perfect sacrifice, because it is the sacrifice of Christ himself to his Father in heaven, a divine sacrifice, an infinite sacrifice, infinitely pleasing, infinitely sufficient to God. What a gift Christ gave us when he offered up his Body and Blood and gave his priests the power to do the same for the continued benefit of all!
Once we’ve offered up our sacrifice at Holy Mass, it’s time to turn to ourselves. It’s time to offer up ourselves to God. We do this through our own “suffering.” I call it suffering, yet very often it really doesn’t rise to the level of true suffering. It can be as simple as a simple penance, like going without chocolate cake after dinner, or asking an elderly neighbour if he needs help with his shopping. The point is, we’re taking away something from ourselves—a little pleasure, a small sacrifice of our time—whatever it is, it’s a sacrifice which we can offer up to God, a tiny token of our love.
Now that we’ve figured out what kind of love God wants from us, let’s now look at the most basic thing of all, the minimum that we need to do to show God we love him. This fundamental thing we can do, or rather, must do, is what our Lord himself instructed. “If ye love me,” he said, “keep my commandments.” It’s a very simple instruction, but so very difficult to obey perfectly. We are surrounded by a world that constantly barrages us with invitations to sin. We are besieged by demons who will try to sway us to yield to these temptations. And our fallen human nature lurks behind the world and the devil, ever ready to do what we want to do rather than what God wants. The world presents, the demon persuades, and finally we ourselves give in.
Keeping us on the straight and narrow are the Ten Commandments of God. If we truly love God the way we claim to, we must know each of these commandments intimately, and then obey them. The Ten Commandments are basically divine laws and natural laws that God gave us in order to protect us from the world, the devil and our fallen human nature. They are gifts from the Almighty and Merciful Creator, designed to help us save our souls. We must not look at them as irritating laws and regulations designed to stop us doing what we want, but as lights along the dark path of life, guiding us to stay on that path and follow it to our destination. Thank you God, for the Ten Commandments. If we love God, we’ll keep them!
At Fatima, our Lady told the three children that more people go to hell by breaking the Sixth Commandment than any of the others. I’ll therefore use this commandment as our example today. The Devil would have us believe that God gives us certain desires only to prevent us from enjoying them. This is a typical trick from the Father of Lies, who perverts a truth and turns it into a blasphemous mockery of what God is trying to do. The enjoyment of these desires is meant to accompany the act of a husband and wife whereby they participate in God’s act of creation. It is a natural yet holy act, and one therefore, which is blessed with a corresponding natural reward. Those of us who are not married have no claim to the rewards of marriage, and our will should be on constant alert against the often powerful temptations that lead us to break the Sixth Commandment.
Parents should be especially alert when it comes to their children. We should teach them modesty from an early age and take precautions to protect them from situations where their curiosity might get the better of them. Speak to them of the virtue of chastity, how the pleasures of the body so easily become the dangers of the soul. Make sure they do not have unlimited access to the internet, television, or social media. Don’t play adult-themed TV shows in their presence, and remember that if it isn’t suitable for children, there’s a very good chance it isn’t suitable for you either. Evaluate the friends they bring to your home, and make sure they’re not a bad influence. Don’t let them go out alone with boyfriends or girlfriends until they reach a suitable age and are ready for marriage. Watch out these days for what they’re teaching your children behind your backs in the schools, and pull them out if necessary. Basically, just make sure your children aren’t exposed to anything that will drag them to that infernal path the devil wants to lead them down. Eventually, they’ll grow up and your influence will wane, but it’s the time you spend with them during their early years that count. So make them count!
That’s just one of the Ten Commandments, very superficially dealt with. There are nine others, and all deserve your full attention and compliance. Read the catechism, examine your conscience frequently, make a good confession regularly. It will all help you to know God’s will and to follow it. After all, we must first know God before we can love him. So let’s get to know what he wants of us, and then practice the virtues that we stand most in need of. Yes, it’s a sacrifice, but sacrifice is the price of love, and the more we get used to sacrificing our own will, the quicker we’ll find that our Lord’s yoke is easy and his burden light. Why? Because the more we do actually sacrifice, the more we will love God. Obeying his commandments is not just a sign that we love God, it is also a means to loving him all the more. “Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, we implore, that we may love thee more and more.”