Second Sunday of Advent, cycle B

Mark 1:1-8

At the time of John the Baptist, the way you got your sins forgiven was to go to Jerusalem, purchase an animal, bring it to a priest, who would pray for you, slaughter the animal, and burn some of it. The rest would be the priest’s dinner. This process went on all the time, but especially during the passover season. John the Baptist’s dad did this kind of work. Granted, like anything the process could be abused, and sometimes was. But to the Jews it wasn’t important if the priest was a scoundrel, what was important was that the process be done properly. Priests, of course, didn’t just do this. They participated in other rituals and had a role in determining whether a person was physically clean -- they diagnosed leprosy. The priests also had to be able to tell whether an animal was fit for sacrifice. All of this took training, so priests were among the educated classes.

So here comes John, dressing like Elijah the prophet. Whenever we hear about John’s diet, we westerners shudder a little bit, but apparently when you cook locusts, and many people do, they taste something like shrimp. And wild honey isn’t so bad either. But why so much attention to his diet? It’s because that’s one of the things the Israelites ate when they were wandering in the desert. Not just manna and quails. And the dietary laws of the Jewish people allow for eating locusts, crickets and grasshoppers, but no other insects. So John, the son of a priest and therefore entitled to the priestly office -- we don’t know if he was trained as a priest -- is acting out Israel’s history, coming out of the wilderness, wearing a prophet’s clothing, living on locusts and honey. And he offers a new way to have your sins forgiven. You don’t have to sacrifice an animal. But your commitment to reform your life has to be real, you have to plunge into the waters of the Jordan river, where your ancestors, a group of homeless wanderers, became a nation, crossing the water to occupy the promised land. That’s why undergoing a baptism of repentance was so attractive; it was a new beginning, it was claiming your ancestral heritage, and maybe it was a little bit of rebellion against the priests of the temple. 

But John’s message, which we could read in some of the other gospels, was very simple; if you want to be rid of your sins, signify your repentance, certainly, but then change your life, that’s what repentance is about. He told the soldiers, “Be satisfied with your salary.” He told the tax collectors to take no more than what was owed them. And these were changes that meant something to the one who wanted his sins forgiven. If you want forgiveness from God, then change your lives.

Repentance is kind of a religious word, we don’t use it in casual conversation. Someone once broke repentance down into three parts, the three R’s. The first is to recognize our sins. Now sin means missing the mark. God wants us all to be perfect in what we are and what we do. Jesus said, “Be perfect, as my heavenly father is perfect””. But if you are like me, you know that you miss the mark every day. Are you the best husband or wife you could be? the best father or mother? The best kid? If you aren’t then recognition of what you could have done differently is the beginning of repentance. Someone once said that an unexamined life is not worth living. We need to get in the habit of examining our lives.

The second R is receiving forgiveness. Jesus has, after all, won God’s forgiveness for all of us, but we have to accept it. We Catholics do that in the sacrament of reconciliation, of course, but we should be open to God’s forgiveness every day. Once we recognize where we have failed to hit the mark, we accept God’s forgiveness and set out to try again, to become a little more what God wants us to be. And that involves considering how we might avoid falling into the same trap as yesterday. I’m always surprised at how frequently I confess the same old things. I must not be receiving forgiveness the way I should.

The third R is reforming your life. When we take part in the sacrament of reconciliation, we are supposed to leave with a “firm purpose of amendment”. This refers to our whole lives. The people baptized by John went through the process once; it signified a new beginning, a new birth. When we repent, we look over our whole life, not just our named sins. Can we do more good in the world? Are there habits that are reducing our productivity? Am I actively trying to be more loving, especially to the people near me? What am I going to do about my deficiencies? How am I going to be more Christ-like?

Today as we meet John once again on the second sunday of advent, let us pray for the gift of repentance, and remember the three r’s, -recognize our sins; receive forgiveness, reform our lives. We can be saints, after all.

First Sunday of Advent, cycle B

Mark 13:33-37

Joan and I just got back from a brief visit to Front Royal, where we attended a function at Christendom College and visited with our children and grandchildren that live there.  On the way down, there was a massive accident on US 81, involving a tractor trailer and several cars.  We didn’t move for two hours.  Our Google GPS suggested an alternative route, so when we got to the turnoff, we ventured off on a two lane road which curved dramatically.  Apparently other people had Google GPS as well, so we were accompanied by many cars in both directions, many of whom did not know how to dim their lights.  After about a half hour of driving in the dark under these conditions, I was about as alert and watchful as I could get, and rapidly approaching exhaustion.  We finally got back on the highway where traffic had started to move, and arrived at my son’s house about three hours later than we had anticipated.  

Be Watchful! Be Alert! You do not know when the time will come!.  This passage from Mark always bothers me.  Of course when you read on Jesus is describing how it will be at the end of time, when he returns.  The whole Gospel is even more troublesome then.  Two thousand years have gone by and he hasn’t returned.  My whole life is much closer to the end than the beginning, and I’m still not quite sure what Jesus means.

I suppose there is nothing we can do to change the end of the world, or for that matter the end of our lives. Both are inevitable.  And there’s no way we can tell when this moment is going to come.  So do I ever let my guard down?  Do I ever close my eyes and sleep? In practical terms none of us lives so that we are always on the alert; I don’t think even the Pope lives that way.  

But it’s true.  The best way to deal with the unexpected is to expect it.  And that’s what advent is really about.  It’s to recenter us, to remind us that just as Christ came two thousand years ago, he will come again, and if we are to believe the various prophecies in the New Testament -- not only those of Jesus, but those in the epistles and in the Book of Revelation, that time will upend everything we thought was permanent and unchangeable.  

So how do we prepare?  As individuals, as Catholics, we know that at the minimum we want to stay in the state of grace, which means using the sacraments of the Church, following a personal plan of spiritual advancement, maybe getting a spiritual director to help us see what we might be missing.  When I was very young Advent was a kind of shortened lent.  The best part for us kids was that we made a promise to give something up so that we would have something to give the Christ Child for Christmas.  It’s kind of silly, I know, but I remember how, as Christmas approached, I would wonder if he would like what I had to offer -- because usually I hadn’t tried too hard, and there were a few times when the temptation to eat candy outweighed my religious fervor.  And I think that is the attitude of the great saints as well.  Did I do enough Lord, with the life you gave me?  Did I love enough, did I make an effort to spread your gospel among those I loved?  What can I show you for all you have given me?

But there’s more.  Is Jesus asking us to live in a constant state of expectation?  I’m not even sure that’s healthy.  But maybe he gives us a clue when he describes the household.  Each servant with his own work, and a gatekeeper to keep watch.. 

And maybe that’s how we are to stay alert at all times.  If we become more and more a community, loving and trusting each other to a greater and greater degree; if we strengthen our bonds with each other through our shared faith, of course, but in practical terms by becoming involved in our parish community through its various ministries and associations.  And as we intentionally work together to strengthen our Christian community, we of course look to our pastors and our bishop who are set up by the sacrament of Holy Orders  to guide us, to be watchmen, to be gatekeepers.  And indeed we also have each other,  And we remember those words, where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am among them.  And it’s a wonderful thing to know that Jesus is there when we come together in our community.  

Jesus urges us to be alert because we don’t know when this period of grace will end.  Advent is a time to ask, are we ready?  And if not, what am I going to do about it?  And maybe part of that is to become more fully part of this parish community, which God gives us precisely so that we as a community can be alert to his presence and intentions.  If you are not involved in our parish life except for attending the weekend liturgy, please think about becoming more a part of parish life in this new liturgical year.   

Christ the King, cycle A

Matthew 25:31-46

Have you heard this gospel before?  Of course you have.  I bet some of us could recite it from memory.  And certainly the top message is crystal clear.  Whatever we do for the least of our brothers, that we do for Jesus -- and that has eternal consequences.  But you know me, I can’t leave things alone.  When I read this passage from Matthew, I was struck by three things.  First, this takes place at the last judgment when the Son of Man will judge the nations.  It doesn’t say, “judge each person”.  Jesus is judging the nations.  

The second thing is that I’m not sure why Jesus has it in for goats.  In his time, shepherds generally kept sheep and goats.  Sheep for their wool;  but sheep are not very smart and need a lot of looking after.  Goats are smarter, more aggressive, and generally can be of great service to the shepherd.  And they reproduce faster.  And they give more milk.  In fact, since they have more babies, the male baby goats are a source of food for the shepherd.  You remember the older brother in the story of the prodigal son?  He told his father, “you have not given me even a kid so that i could have a party with my friends”.  A kid is a baby goat. So why the sheep on one side, the good side, and the goats on the other?  I don’t know the answer to that question, but people have tried.  Goats being smarter have more responsibility.  Maybe Jesus is criticizing the leaders of the people.  Or, since we started with nations, rather than people, maybe the goats are the nations that have everything and the sheep are the ones that have nothing.  The first world countries, as anyone with eyes can see, are first world at least in part because they have taken advantage of third world countries.  Are the goats the first world countries?  YOu might get the impression that Pope Francis thinks so when you read his encyclicals and letters.  But I don’t really know if that’s what the Lord had in mind.  Jesus never seemed terribly political.  But maybe we can take away the idea that we Christians bear responsibility for what our nation does.  We can’t isolate ourselves, we have to be politically active at least in the matter of informing ourselves and voting.  As Catholics we have a responsibility to promote our church’s social teachings when we vote, or maybe participate more deeply in our political system. 

The third thing is that the righteous as well as the unrighteous had no idea that their actions on behalf of the hungry, thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned had anything to do with Christ.  And yet, every saint on the calendar and all who are not, as well, acted because they saw what they were doing as flowing from Christ’s teachings.  I don’t think Mother Theresa would have said the words, “When did I see you hungry and I fed you?”  That’s exactly why she lived her life the way she did.  She saw Jesus in the people she served.  So who are these people Jesus is talking about?

One very interesting idea is that Jesus uses the words “least of my brothers”.  We know that elsewhere he says that his brothers and sisters and mother are those who hear the word of God and keep it.  Jesus identifies his family by their response to his teaching.  But if you are imitating Jesus, you risk being hungry, thirsty, seen as a stranger;  we probably don’t have to worry too much about being naked, at least not in this country.  But being ill or imprisoned because we follow Jesus, those are real possibilities as well. Not so much here in the United States in the twenty-first century, but our Christian brothers and sisters are suffering throughout much of the world.  And in Jesus’ time it was much worse.  If you were a Christian in the Roman empire of the first century, you might very well be thrown in prison, deprived of food and drink.  If you weren’t you might be prevented from getting a decent job because you wouldn't worship the emperor.  And if things were really bad, you could be paraded naked through the streets like the terrorists did with the hostages they captured in Israel.  It’s a great way to insult someone, to make them go naked in public.  

There is a story about Cardinal Van Thuan who was imprisoned by the Vietnamese communists for thirteen years.  He made friends with one of the guards.  The guard offered to pray to Our Lady of La Vang, on behalf of the Cardinal, since he walked past the shrine on his way home every day.  He would pray, “Dear Lady, I am not a Christian, but please give Cardinal Van Thuan what he needs today.”  

Maybe Jesus is making a promise that he won’t forget even the slightest bit of kindness rendered to one of his followers, even by non-believers.  In another place in scripture he says, “If anyone gives one of these little ones who is my disciple a cup of water, he will not go unrewarded.”  

On this feast of Christ the King let us remember again that Jesus desires the salvation of all human beings, and he will achieve that through his people, you and I.  And while we are so fortunate because we belong to the Church he founded, he makes possible his salvation to everyone, if they do nothing more than to come to the aid of one of his brothers or sisters -- you and I.    

Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

 Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 25:14-30

I’m sure many of you football fans have been following the career of Mac Jones, who led the Patriots to the playoffs two years ago. We thought we had another Tom Brady. And then things started to go sour. Under Mac Jones the Patriots now have the worst record in the American Football Conference. When you read the sport pages and sometimes I do, various theories about why the change are advanced. It’s the coaching; it’s the defense, which no longer is the best in the league; it’s the changes in personnel at the top. But maybe it’s possible that Mac Jones, who once went out on the field to win games, is now going out trying not to lose; and that is a terrible way to play football or do anything in life, I guess.

If you go back and read the Sunday gospels for the last three Sundays, you will see that the parables all have something to do with what we are supposed to be doing while waiting for Christ’s return. The greatest among you must be your servant. Therefore, stay awake, you know neither the day nor the hour. And today, for everyone who has, more will be given and he will become rich. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away from him.

The parable of the talents which we just read, needs a little exposition. A talent is a lot. A talent was a unit of weight for precious metals, kind of like we use carats for weighing diamonds. If you google it, you would find that the average laborer would probably not quite earn a whole talent if he worked for twenty years. So this man going on a journey is really rich, and I don’t know what fraction of his wealth he entrusted to his servants, maybe all of it, maybe some; but imagine how those listening to Jesus must have reacted. They are thinking, what would I do if someone gave me a talent? And what kind of man would trust his servants that much?

Maybe that’s the first thing about this parable. How much God trusts us. He gives us free will, a beautiful world, clear instructions through his prophets and the Church and especially through his Son, and then he stands back crossing his fingers, waiting for us to make real the kingdom of God which is among us. And we make a little progress, and we fall back, and by fits and starts maybe we see a little progress -- and ultimately we trust that somehow God’s side will triumph in the long run.

Notice that the servants get different amounts of the talents. That should be reassuring. Not everyone can be a mother Theresa or a Saint Francis; some of us can aspire to be like Saint Louis and Saint Zele Martin, the parents of Saint Therese of Lisieux; or maybe Saint Guiseppe Mosconi, who spent his life becoming holy as a physician; or maybe Blessed Carlos Acutis, or Saint Maria Goretti, who died as teenagers. Or maybe someone who isn’t even on the books yet. But what they all have in common is love; they died like Jesus did, having done everything they could to take the love in their hearts and reach out to others in the way God inspired them to do. That’s what God does. He gives us his love in proportion to our capacity to multiply it. Some tenfold, some five fold, some two-fold. And God doesn’t compare one with the other. If you multiply what you have been given, you will be told, Well done.

But the man who received one talent. Instead of multiplying the love in the world, which is what building up the kingdom of heaven is all about, he holds it back. He doesn’t love. Oh, he feels the impulse, he has the opportunity, but maybe like Mac Jones, he’s always second guessing himself. And over time his capacity to love diminishes until there isn’t any at all.

And I think there is another thing here. You get the feeling that the man who went off on a journey is a hard taskmaster who gathers where he did not scatter, and so forth. Maybe not; maybe our poor one talent guy talked himself into believing that. The master kind of agrees with his opinion, but points out that the one talent guy could have racked up a little interest -- that would have required very little of him, and he would still have received his master’s praise.

Some of you are aware of Matthew Kelly, who seems to be on fire evangelizing. He recently sent us something called the “Holy Moments bucket list”. It consists of thirty things to do in order to have the best month of your life -- and I suspect, bring you closer to passing on the love God has for you. Here are a few:

Mail a handwritten note to someone you care about, telling them how much they mean to you.

Tell your supervisor about something good that your co-worker did.

Practice generosity by leaving a 50% tip.

Make a list of things that scare you, pick one out, and do it.

You get the idea. Practice loving by doing loving things, for others, for yourself, for God. And you will begin to hear those words - Well done, good and faithful servant -- and you will find yourself eager to do more for your master.

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle

Matthew 25:1-13

I was a boy scout once. I remember the motto of the scouts -- Be prepared. And we were. All of us had a boy scout knife with a screwdriver, a saw, a can opener and an awl in addition to the knife blade. Part of being prepared was to have a flashlight that worked, a collapsible drinking cup, and of course on a long hike you would carry water in a metal canteen, coated in canvas, so that if the water got warm, you could splash some on the canvas and it would cool down. To cap things off, I remember one of our scoutmasters taking us through the woods identifying plants we could eat if things got desperate. I’m afraid I forgot all that lore. But we were prepared, we thought, for anything.

But five of the young ladies in our gospel story are prepared for everything except waiting. And that’s one message to take home today. Are we prepared for waiting, and waiting for the Lord? Because the bridegroom is a symbol for the one we wait for -- the one who will come again as promised, Jesus. And after two thousand years it’s easy to assume that it might be another two thousand years before he comes, so naturally, we aren’t holding our breath. And that’s where we fall down.

I hate to wait. If I am put on hold when I call about a problem, that’s a good way to ruin my day. I imagine there’s one person trying to address twenty different problems, and he’s hoping I’ll give up and hang up. And after I wait ten minutes or so, I’m too invested to hang up. I can waste a lot of time this way.

We don’t know why God is making us wait. The early Christians thought the return of Jesus was just around the corner, and that colored everything they did. We read in the Acts of the Apostles that people were selling their possessions and laying the proceeds at the feet of the apostles -- if Christ was coming soon, what good was there in owning a farm? By the end of the first century, people were making excuses -- He would come when the whole world had a chance to hear the gospel; he would come in one thousand years like it sort of said in the book of revelation. The second letter of Peter tells us that for God, a thousand years is like a day, and he reminds us that 400 years passed before God kept his promise to the Israelites that he would free them and give them a land of their own. God is outside of time and space.

While we wait, we know God is not waiting, he’s always acting in the world. And he is acting in us. One of the reasons we wait is so that we become aware of what God is doing in us. How do we do that? One of the Psalms tells us “be still and know that I am God”. If you really want to know what God is doing, you have to make time to listen. We think praying means that we do all the talking. Part of praying is listening.

Another thing we can do while we wait is stock up on oil. We do that by doing what Christians have been doing for two thousand years. Praying, studying scripture, form a stronger relationship with Jesus. And he told us how to do that -- feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and so on. Whatever we do for the least of our brothers, we do for him.

And we have to recharge. God gives all of us something special that recharges us -- it may be listening to music, taking a walk in the woods, playing a sport, or maybe a video game. Blessed Carlos Acutis, who died in his teens, allowed himself one hour a day to play video games. And all of us should devote a little time to recharging our batteries.

And that of course is why the smart bridesmaids didn’t share their oil with the foolish ones. You can’t share your oil. If I admire someone who can play the violin, he can’t share that with me.

This parable has a sad ending, not just because the foolish ladies get locked out of the banquet. The really sad thing is that the bridegroom says, “I do not know you”. But the good thing about the parable is that it reminds us that we still have time, we still have the opportunity to store up extra oil, we still can change our lives so that we will hear those words, “Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.”

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

 Matthew 23: 1-12

Because I’m a deacon, A lot of people open up to me about how they feel about this priest, or that bishop, or often, the Pope. Usually it’s a criticism. I don’t hear a lot of people saying, “He’s doing a great job.” Pope Francis gets a lot of flack. Unlike previous Popes, he’s not very careful about how he answers reporters or interviewers.

Today’s Gospel begins with a surprising statement: “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatever they tell you.” Most of the time the gospels show Jesus fighting with the teachers of the law, often when they try to trap him into saying something divisive or dangerous. But here he tells his hearers to do whatever they tell you.

We need to reflect on a typical worship service in the synagogue in those days. The people would gather, men on one side, women and small children on the other -- or men in front, women and small children in the back, as is still done in mosques. The rabbi, or in Jesus’ time a scribe or a Pharisee who was also a scribe, since scribes could read, would lead the prayers, then read from the Torah scroll, and then from the scroll of the prophets or the scroll of the teachings -- the latter containing Old Testament books other than the first five and the prophets. It was something like our own lectionary. You probably remember when Jesus began his public ministry, he read from the scroll of Isaiah, and declared afterwards that “Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing.” After reading, the scribe, or perhaps another authority, would sit down and explain how that reading applied to life in general. That seat was referred to as the Chair of Moses. Someone who sat in it to teach was considered to have some of the authority of Moses himself, who, you may remember, gave some of his authority to seventy elders to help govern the people.

But Jesus goes on to say, “do not follow their example -- because they preach but do not practice.”

It’s very similar to what we Catholics believe. We believe the Holy Spirit keeps the Church from error. God shepherds his people through the Pope, the bishops, and our priests. But we all know that all of those individuals are humans, and all have some fault or other -- not necessarily sin, although we are all sinful; but rather faults that interfere with their mission.

Sometimes our teachers do act like hypocrites. They did in Jesus’ time as well. Jesus is telling us a couple of things here, true in his time and in ours: respect the fact that some people are given the authority to teach and listen to them. That does not mean we should necessarily act like them.

Then Jesus gives his disciples the bottom line. How do you tell good teaching from bad? You look to Jesus. He’s the only one we can ultimately call “rabbi” or teacher. Another point: if we are all brothers under the same Father, then anyone whose teaching threatens that bond between brothers is a false teacher. If you chip off chunks of the Church and go your own way, like the Protestant reformers, that’s pretty much an indication that despite their sincerity, their teaching is tainted with falsehood. And finally any threat to God-given authority which ultimately resides in Jesus himself, is another sign of false teaching; “Do not be called Master.”.

Sadly, we human beings still have to muddle through. Take the controversy over the old Tridentine rite of the Mass -- Latin, multiple repetitions, priest facing the altar, movements carefully practiced in the seminary so that once you were finally ordained you would say mass just like all the other priests in the world. Some people wanted that to continue. Pope Benedict lifted previous restrictions and allowed any priest to say the mass privately, and lay people could attend -- but it wasn't’ to be said in place of the regular liturgy. And of course Pope Francis put more restrictions on who could say the mass and when and where it could be said. Now none of this has to do with what we are to believe about the Mass, it has to do with church discipline. But you can see how a person who considers himself or herself a faithful Catholic but loves the Tridentine rite, and there are many who fit this description, might wonder which Pope is the one I should listen to? And confusion reigns.

And Jesus again teaches us who we should imitate -- the one who humbles himself, the one who takes the role of servant. And Jesus himself acts out this role and reminds us at the time of the last supper that he is the servant, he is the one who washes the feet of the apostles, he is the one who will lay down his life for his friends; he is the only one whose example we should follow.

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 22:34-40

When Jesus gives us his answer to the scholar of the law in today's gospel, it isn’t anything new.  He literally quotes the Old Testament, directly from the Torah, the part considered the holiest section.  You can see an expansion of that second part in the first reading, when the lord tells the Israelites that there is no question, he is on the side of the poor, the alien, the widow and the orphan.  But when you read the historical books of the Old Testament, you see that there wasn’t much recorded about how well the people followed these directions.  In fact, the opposite seems to be true.  And I don’t think things have changed much since Jesus’ time either.  We certainly can point with some satisfaction to our Church and how down through the ages there have been movements within the Church to show love to those in distress -- the many religious orders, the lay movements, the founding of hospitals and colleges and orphanages -- Jesus is not talking about institutional charity.  In a similar passage in the gospel of Luke, he follows this with the story of the Good Samaritan, to point out the way we are to love our neighbor.

But we don’t. I don’t anyway.  I encounter someone whose cardboard sign tells me they are homeless, and I look the other way.  If I’m ever downtown, and I hardly go anymore, I try to avoid the person whose belongings are all in a borrowed shopping cart.  And I bet most of you are the same way. Oh, I want what is best for them, and I guess that’s sort of love.

Perhaps we should look at the words of Jesus more closely.  Our attention is naturally drawn to the first statement, the love of God.  But Jesus really mentions three loves -- of God, of neighbor, and of ourselves.  And I wonder sometimes whether our inability to carry out Jesus’ greatest commandments in a wholehearted way has to do with our not loving ourselves.  Most of us, especially in this community, take care of ourselves physically.  We aren’t given to drug or alcohol abuse. Some of us exercise and watch our diets.  I guess taking care of our physical needs is love of self.  But what do we put in our minds?  Where do we go for mental stimulation? I don’t know about you, but for me it’s hard not to follow the clickbait trail when I turn on my computer.  Before I know it, I’m learning things like “what the Catholic Church does not want you to know.”

And now that I can get almost any program any time, thanks to Netflix, I’m watching old shows that I missed when they first came out on network tv.  And there are people that fill their minds with porn or spend hours playing realistic video games.  This sort of thing is not loving myself, it’s the opposite.  And what do we put in our souls?  Jesus said, “where your treasures are, there your heart will be”.  And he urged us to lay up treasures in heaven” so our hearts will be there as well.  And I can only hope God is giving me some slack about all the distractions I experience when I’m praying or trying to study scripture, both of which I don’t do often enough or well enough.  That’s not loving myself.

If you read the biographies of some of the great saints, like Saint Therese of Lisieux, you often find a moment in their lives when things changed, and they settled into proper love of themselves, which freed up their power to love their neighbor and God. Theresa realized that she didn’t have to be a missionary or a martyr, she would be love, love in the heart of the church.  Saint Francis discovered his true self when he heard Jesus tell him to build up his church and began doing exactly that.  When we really learn to love ourselves, we embrace who we are, warts and all -- and in doing so we become in tune with God, who long before we do, has already embraced us.

Then we can love our neighbor, which indeed means meeting them at their point of need, like the Good Samaritan, like Jesus himself; but it also means that we look at our neighbor and see that he or she bears the image of God.  When we see that, our whole attitude towards our neighbor changes; and we are more inclined to love them as we love ourselves.  Sometimes it’s tough love, which takes courage; but tough love is better than no love at all.  If we have removed the beam from our own eye, we can help remove the speck from our neighbor’s eye. And if we are always aware that God loves us as we are and has our back, it’s easier to meet the needs of those we are called to love.   

And as we love our neighbor who is stamped with God’s image, we begin to love God even more, since we realize that wherever there is love, there is God, because as John tells us in very simple terms, God is love.  

So begin by loving yourself as God loves you, inadequate and sinful as you are; then look for God in your neighbor and love your neighbor because of that; and then as you exercise love, you will discover that where there is love, there is God.  And in loving this way, you will love with all your heart, soul, and mind.