Word to the Wise
Thursday, October 31, 2019 - Thursday in the 30th Week in Ordinary Time
[Rom 8:31b-39 and Luke 13:31-35]What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?..........No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans]
Our whole world can change when we discover that someone else loves us as much as we love them! It is a powerful experience. What amazes me is the number of people I meet who are convinced that God does not love them! Sometimes the feeling is due to a list of sorrows and difficulties that somehow one should not endure if God truly loves one. But we know from our own experience that hardship comes to friends we love and we can only stand by them in that difficulty. God is like that. The crucifix is a very graphic sign of God's love and that terrible thing happened to His own Son! Pope Francis put it well when he said, "God weeps!"
St Paul's confidence in God's love is eloquent and can assure us of that love. Pope Benedict and Pope Francis co-wrote an encyclical, LUMEN FIDEI, in which we are told that faith is a result of an encounter with a love that exceeds all other love we could imagine. A great poverty occurs when we see God as a stern judge and not as a loving friend. St. Paul says elsewhere that what proves that God loves us is that Christ died for us even though we are sinners. Indeed, in the Gospel According to John, Jesus says that there is no greater love than when someone lays down their life for a friend. St. Paul's encouragement can be ours to share with others when we accept the love of God. AMEN