The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friends in Christ,

We are truly blessed when we are securely on our way to Heaven. This path is placed before us when we see Jesus with the eyes of faith. However, seeing, even with the eyes of faith, is not quite enough. Our salvation is bound up intimately with faith motivated by love. God's law spells this out for us quite clearly: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thy self."

When we see, we love, and we believe. We also perceive these aspects of our salvation in the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. When we perceive good, we form the desire, or hope, for good. Seeing brings forth believing (faith). Rising above or encompassing everything else is charity or love. We love the good we see or perceive goodness because we love. We hope for the good that we love, or we love the good that we hope for.

Trying to unravel which comes first in the order of time seems like a fruitless pursuit. Likewise, we can endlessly argue over which virtues are second to charity. St. Paul has already told us that Charity is the greatest. Perhaps our intelligence and our desire to put everything into a logical order is misguided. Like the three faculties of the soul (memory, intellect, and will) or the three Persons in the Blessed Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), the three theological virtues are intimately bound up with each other. When we obtain one, we automatically receive the other two. We cannot have one without the others.

To see Jesus is to love, desire, and believe in Him. To love our neighbors, we must be able to see them and desire what is good for them. In the parable that Jesus gave us in today's Gospel reading (Luke 10: 23-37), we see that the priest or the Levite did not see the man who fell among robbers — they both turned away. Since they could not look upon the man, they could not desire any good for him, nor could they genuinely love him. The Samaritan saw him, desired good for him, and loved him. His charitable works were the logical development of his loving his neighbor.

Loving our neighbors sometimes means that we must cause them pain or discomfort. The Samaritan poured wine (alcohol) into the wounds of the man abused by robbers. I am sure this caused the poor man a lot of physical discomfort, if not outright pain. But he also poured in oil, which soothed the pain and softened the tissues so that they could heal.

Love does not always imply giving someone whatever they want or ask for. Parents who genuinely love their children often must refuse their whims, fancies, and desires in the same way God does not give us everything our disordered fallen natures desire.

Love enables us to see our neighbors in their suffering, to have compassion for them, and desire or help them to obtain whatever good they may need. Love also lets us perceive that we cannot help them in their evil path of sin. No matter how much a neighbor pleads and begs, if we love them, we cannot assist them in pursuing any vice, sin, or harmful activity.

In the parable, the man who fell among robbers was not in the pursuit of any evil or illegal activity but was instead the victim of evil. Love motivates us to compassion, sympathy, and to assist him in his need.

While we also love the robbers, we find a different mode of action is necessary. The robber needs to be stopped and even punished in this life so that he will repent and cease his evil ways and be spared an eternal punishment in Hell. It is not helping him to hide or shelter him from the temporal punishments that are the necessary consequences of sin. If we love him, we will not provide him with the weapons needed to pursue his sinful habits. On the contrary, our love demands that we do whatever we can to take his weapons away from him so that he is hindered from his diabolic pursuit. When it is necessary, love will even hand him over to the civil authority so that he may be corrected in this world and that he may be spared in the next world.

Today, it appears that the love of God and love of neighbor have indeed grown cold in our society. Let us see our neighbors and offer them whatever assistance we can to enter or return to the path of virtue and love. Far from ignoring or turning away from our suffering or sinning neighbors, may true love inspire in us the desire to offer them the corporal and, even more importantly, the spiritual works of mercy.

email: father@friarsminor.org Franciscan Benefactor Seraph Subscription Vocations Have you remembered God?

Would you like to make a donation?

Or, just log onto PayPal.com, after signing in you can send your donation to us at: Friars@friarsminor.org .

Blog with audio downloads

Return to Menu.

Return to Homepage.