Who Defines Love For You?

The "definer of love" for many contemporary Americans.

 

(Seventh Sunday of Easter (C): This homily was given on May 12, 2013 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read John 13: 31-35; 17: 20-26.)

 

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Seventh Sunday of Easter 2013]

 

Who defines love for you?

Another way to phrase that question would be: Who is the major contributor to your understanding of what love really is?

That’s a crucial issue for each of us to address, because I would contend that whoever defines love for you, defines to a great extent how you love other people!

As human beings, we tend to love as we have been loved, and according to our ideas about love.  Now that’s not so bad if you’ve experienced true love in your life and have learned what real love is all about, but it can be disastrous if you’ve experienced and been influenced by some counterfeit version of love.

This is why people who abuse others emotionally, physically or sexually, very often come from abusive backgrounds themselves.  Love was defined for these abusers by the person or the persons who abused them—and that experience of false love now directly influences how they treat the people they live and associate with.

I would say that in our society at the present time love is being defined for many people by none other than Mr. Hugh Hefner, of Playboy fame.  It’s been that way for decades.

And that’s a real problem.  For these men and women, love ends up becoming little more than a synonym for sex.  And that direct association of love with sex has a number of very practical consequences:  It’s what leads many couples to live together before marriage, and to contracept within marriage.  It also leads some people to be unfaithful in their marriages; and it’s one of the biggest reasons why the divorce rate is so high.

You see, according to Hugh Hefner’s understanding of love, pleasure is the operative principle, so once the pleasure is gone so is the relationship!

And, of course, if marriage is about love, and love is almost exclusively about sex and pleasure, then why shouldn’t gay couples be allowed to marry?  Don’t they deserve some pleasure—some “love”—in their lives?

That’s the twisted logic of many supporters of so-called “gay marriage.” (And if you don’t believe me, just ask our “brilliant” legislators here in the “Catholic” state of Rhode Island who voted for it two weeks ago!).

This skewed logic makes perfect sense in their minds, ultimately because they’ve unknowingly allowed a man like Hugh Hefner to define love for them.

I remember seeing an interview with Hefner once on TV, and someone asked him, “Don’t you feel any regrets about using these young women, and allowing them to use you?” and in his response Hefner basically said, “No—if we’re all aware of the fact that we’re using each other, but we all derive pleasure from the experience, what does it matter?”

And you want to know why so many people today feel alone, and unloved and abused—even though they’re having lots and lots of sex?!

This is one of the major reasons why.  They’re using each other for pleasure through sex, and they think it’s love!

As Catholic Christians our ultimate “definer of love” is supposed to be Jesus Christ—and only Jesus Christ!  In today’s gospel text from John 17, Jesus prays that his love—rooted in the Father—will be present in us.  He said this at the Last Supper, on the night before he died.  He had said something similar earlier in the meal, which is recorded for us in John, chapter 13.  There he said, “As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” 

Notice the qualifying phrase there: “As I have loved you.”  Had Jesus said, “Love one another” and then left it at that, it would be perfectly acceptable to have someone like Hugh Hefner define love for us.  We would even be able to define love for ourselves.

But because Jesus added those five short words “as I have loved you,” all those other options are off the table, so to speak.  This means that our personal view of love is to be formed, first and foremost, based on the words and deeds of our Lord and Savior, who has revealed to us the love of the heavenly Father.

So what exactly was the love of Jesus Christ like?  What were the primary qualities of the love that Jesus showed to other people when he walked the face of this earth?

Well, first of all, the love of Jesus was selfless.  Our Lord never thought of himself first; he always thought of others and the needs of others before he thought of himself and his own needs.  In fact, that’s the reason he came to this earth in the first place: it was to save us from sin and eternal death.  We are the ones who have benefitted from the Incarnation and salvific activity of Jesus.  When all was said and done, the only things our Lord got out of the experience of becoming man were a bloody sweat, a heavy cross and five holes in his body!

The love of Jesus was also patient.  That patience was shown in a special way toward his apostles, who definitely were not among ‘the best’ and ‘the brightest’ when our Lord first called them.  It took them a long time to grow and mature in their faith, but through all those growing pains Jesus showed them incredible patience.  He was patient with Peter at Caesarea-Philippi when Peter put his foot in his mouth and said the wrong thing; he was patient with Peter after his 3 denials; he was patient with Thomas in his doubts; he was patient with Matthew in his worldliness and materialism.

That’s because real love is patient—as St. Paul tells us explicitly in 1 Corinthians 13.

The love of Jesus was also a forgiving love. 

Forgiveness needs to a part of every interpersonal relationship, because every interpersonal relationship involves people who are sinners, and who consequently hurt one another!

If forgiveness is not present in a relationship, the relationship does not survive.

It’s that simple.

Well, not surprisingly, Jesus is our great role model for forgiveness, since he forgave the people who hated him and who murdered him WHILE THEY WERE IN THE PROCESS OF MURDERING HIM!

“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

It takes a special kind of strength to forgive others from the heart—especially when the people who have offended us are not sorry, like the murderers of Jesus were not sorry. 

Think of the people who were wounded and who lost loved ones in the terrorist attack in Boston on Patriots’ Day.  How hard must it be—and will it be—for them to forgive?

Forgiveness is not easy—but it is possible by the grace of God that comes to us through Jesus Christ, the greatest forgiver of them all!

Finally, the love of Jesus was self-sacrificial.

“Greater love no one has,” Jesus said, “than to lay down his life for his friends.”  Real, genuine love always finds its greatest and most perfect expression in sacrifice.  Weren’t you moved and inspired the other day when you watched the news footage of the police and medical personnel—and the ordinary, private citizens—rushing to the aid of those injured by the explosions at the Marathon?  I sure was!  What was moving and inspiring was the fact that these men and women were putting their lives on the line as they were helping those in need!  For all these rescuers knew, there were more bombs in Copley Square that were about to go off!  But they sacrificed themselves anyway.  That’s the love of Jesus Christ in action.

And that’s why the greatest “visual definition” of love is—and always will be—the cross of Jesus, in the form of the crucifix.

In closing I should also add the point that many of us in this church right now have been blessed to experience real love—that is to say we’ve been blessed to experience the selfless, patient, forgiving, self-sacrificial love of Jesus Christ—through our earthly mothers.  And for that, we say a special thank you on this Mother’s Day to God—and to them.

So—who defines love for you?  Who is the major contributor to your understanding of what love really is?

For each of us, and for every Catholic Christian, may it always be Jesus, Jesus—and only Jesus!

The Ascension: A Disappearance, not a Departure!

Fr. Emil Kapaun

 

 

Fr. Kapaun (right) helping a wounded soldier.

 

(Ascension Thursday 2013: This homily was given on May 9, 2013 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Acts 1: 1-14.)

 

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Ascension 2013]

 

 

In a homily he gave on the Feast of the Ascension back in 2007, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the papal household, made a very important distinction.  The distinction was between “a disappearance” and “a departure.”  Listen to his words:

 

If we do not want the Ascension to be a sad “farewell,” but rather a true feast, then we must understand the radical difference between a disappearance and a departure.  With the ascension, Jesus has not departed, he has not become absent; he has only disappeared from our sight.  Those who leave are no longer here; those who only go out of our sight, however, can still be near us—it is only that something prevents our seeing them.  Jesus does disappear from the apostles’ sight at the ascension, but he does so to be present in another more intimate way.

That’s a great insight!  And it means that Jesus can still make himself present in a visible way in this world.  We know, of course, that he’s present in a hidden way at Mass—in the Eucharist (under the appearances of bread and wine), and in the proclaimed word.  We know that he’s present in a similar way in the other sacraments.  

But there’s another presence of Jesus Christ that actually makes him visible to those who have the eyes of faith.  I’m talking here about his presence in his disciples, and his presence in the acts of charity and self-sacrifice performed by those disciples—and at times even by unbelievers.

I’ll give you two timely examples.

Roughly 24 hours after the terrorist attack in Boston on Patriots’ Day, a very distraught man sent me an email in which he wrote the following: “Fr. Ray, it is becoming harder and harder to believe that there really is a God!  Where was he yesterday when these people—young kids that never even got the chance to experience life—had their lives completely destroyed or devastated?  Where was he?  Answer me, Fr. Ray, where was he?”

The following Thursday night I shared those words with the teenagers who were present here in church for youth group, and I asked them how they would respond to that man’s question.  One of them raised his hand and said, “Fr. Ray, God was there.  He was there in the people who helped!  He was there in the people who went in to help the injured and those who were dying.”

That teenager, I would say, was absolutely correct.  I know that I was moved—as I’m sure many of you were—as I watched the news footage of the medical and rescue personnel (and the ordinary citizens) who rushed into the area where the bombs had just exploded.

How did they know there weren’t more bombs there that were about to go off?

The answer, of course, is that they didn’t know that all the bombs had exploded!  They didn’t know the area was safe; they didn’t know, for sure, that they themselves would not be killed or seriously injured like the others.

But they went in anyway!

Whether these men and women were conscious of it or not, it was the grace of God that moved them to perform those acts of courage and compassion for others.

In a very real way, they made Jesus Christ visibly present in what they did for their brothers and sisters in the human family.

The second example I’ll share with you today occurred a few days before the Boston Marathon bombing—on April 11, to be exact.  On that day, President Obama awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor—our nation’s highest military award—to a Catholic priest: Fr. Emil Kapaun, an Army chaplain who died in a prisoner-of-war camp in North Korea in 1951, during the Korean War.

Many of those who served with Fr. Kapaun had been calling for this award to be given for over 60 years.  Listen now to some of what the President said at the ceremony:

 

[The] Chinese forces entered the war with a massive surprise attack—perhaps 20,000 soldiers pouring down on a few thousand Americans. In the chaos, dodging bullets and explosions, Father Kapaun raced between foxholes, out past the front lines and into no-man’s land—dragging the wounded to safety.
When his commanders ordered an evacuation, he chose to stay—gathering the injured, tending to their wounds. When the enemy broke through and the combat was hand-to-hand, he carried on—comforting the injured and the dying, offering some measure of peace as they left this Earth.
When enemy forces bore down, it seemed like the end—that these wounded Americans, more than a dozen of them, would be gunned down. But Father Kapaun spotted a wounded Chinese officer. He pleaded with this Chinese officer and convinced him to call out to his fellow Chinese. The shooting stopped and they negotiated a safe surrender, saving those American lives.
Then, as Father Kapaun was being led away, he saw another American—wounded, unable to walk, laying in a ditch, defenseless. An enemy soldier was standing over him, rifle aimed at his head, ready to shoot. And Father Kapaun marched over and pushed the enemy soldier aside. And then as the soldier watched, stunned, Father Kapaun carried that wounded American away.  [That man he saved, by the way, is now in his 80s—and was there at the ceremony!]
This is the valor we honor today—an American soldier who didn’t fire a gun, but who wielded the mightiest weapon of all, a love for his brothers so pure that he was willing to die so that they might live.
[The following remarks by the President were not included in my homily, but are added here to provide further reflection on the extraordinary witness of this great priest.]
And yet, the incredible story of Father Kapaun does not end there.
He carried that injured American, for miles, as their captors forced them on a death march. When Father Kapaun grew tired, he’d help the wounded soldier hop on one leg. When other prisoners stumbled, he picked them up. When they wanted to quit—knowing that stragglers would be shot—he begged them to keep walking.
In the camps that winter, deep in a valley, men could freeze to death in their sleep. Father Kapaun offered them his own clothes. They starved on tiny rations of millet and corn and birdseed. He somehow snuck past the guards, foraged in nearby fields, and returned with rice and potatoes. In desperation, some men hoarded food. He convinced them to share. Their bodies were ravaged by dysentery. He grabbed some rocks, pounded metal into pots and boiled clean water. They lived in filth. He washed their clothes and he cleansed their wounds.
The guards ridiculed his devotion to his Savior and the Almighty. They took his clothes and made him stand in the freezing cold for hours. Yet, he never lost his faith. If anything, it only grew stronger. At night, he slipped into huts to lead prisoners in prayer, saying the Rosary, administering the sacraments, offering three simple words: “God bless you.” One of them later said that with his very presence he could just for a moment turn a mud hut into a cathedral.

The soldiers who served with Fr. Emil Kapaun in Korea would find it very easy to understand the point of today’s homily: that Jesus Christ, although he has disappeared through his ascension, has not departed from the earth.  They know that because they actually experienced the presence of our Savior in a powerful way through the words and the deeds of this very holy priest.  Let’s pray at this Mass that the people with whom we share our lives will also experience the presence of the risen and ascended Christ—through us!

Fr. Giudice's Homily on the Gay Marriage Controversy

Regrettably, this week the Rhode Island state senate passed a bill that will soon legalize so-called "gay marriage." 
 
This tragic situation was brought about with the assistance of a number of former OPPONENTS of same-sex marriage--including Westerly's representative in the senate, Dennis Algiere.

My announcement at the end of our Masses two weeks ago, urging people to contact Senator Algiere and to let him know where they stood on the issue, caused quite a stir in town and in the local newspaper, The Westerly Sun.

Fr. Giudice addressed all of this in his excellent homily this weekend.  To listen to his homily, click here:
Fr. Giudice's Homily April 28

Hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd is not always a pleasant experience!

Augustine (Allesandro Preziosi) and Monica (Monica Guerritore) in "Restless Heart"

 

(Fourth Sunday of Easter (C): This homily was given on April 21, 2013 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I. by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Acts 13: 14, 43-52; John 10:27-30.)

 

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fourth Sunday of Easter 2013]

 

 

Hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd is not always a pleasant experience!

Every Christian—every human person—needs to understand that.

Jesus said to us in today’s gospel reading from John 10, “My sheep hear my voice.”

That, of course, is true.  But Jesus could have added the line, “however, it’s not always a pleasant experience for them when they hear my voice”—and the statement would still have been true.

Last weekend many of us saw the film, “Restless Heart” at the Westerly Middle School.  The movie was about St. Augustine, whose pre-conversion life was definitely as “colorful” as any modern-day reality show or soap opera!

Before his conversion at the age of 33, Augustine often prayed the famous prayer, “Oh Lord, make me chaste—but not yet!”

Needless to say, he gave his mother, Monica, fits!  But she never stopped praying for her son; nor did she stop telling him the truth—whether he wanted to hear it or not (and most of the time, as you might imagine, he did not want to hear any of it!).  For the young and hedonistic Augustine, Monica was the voice of the Good Shepherd; but, until he was ready to open his ‘restless heart’ to Christ, Augustine usually had a very unpleasant experience when he heard the Good Shepherd’s voice through his mom!   We can discern that from these words which he wrote many years after his conversion: “I remember my mother warned me in private not to commit fornication, and especially not to defile another man’s wife.  These seemed to me womanish advices, which I should blush to obey.  But they were yours, O God, and I knew it not.”

But they were yours, O God, and I knew it not.

In today’s first reading from Acts 13, Paul and Barnabas preach the gospel message to the people of Antioch.  Through these two apostles, the people of that city were blessed to hear in a very clear and powerful way the voice of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd.

But not all of them were thrilled by what they heard, were they?  Quite oppositely, many of them were apoplectic!  They were enraged!  That led some of them to verbally abuse Paul and Barnabas while the two men were trying to preach God’s word to the crowd; and shortly thereafter it led others to start a persecution of Paul and Barnabas that finally resulted in the two apostles getting kicked out of town!

Hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd was definitely not a pleasant experience for the hard-hearted men and women of Antioch.

So, I ask you, my brothers and sisters, why should we expect things to be any different in our world today?  If the Catholic Church is what she claims to be—in other words, if the Catholic Church in her official teaching really speaks with the voice of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ—then shouldn’t we expect to hear a challenging message from time to time?  Shouldn’t we expect to hear from the Church the same kind of message that Augustine heard from his mother; the same kind of message that the people of Antioch heard from Paul and Barnabas?

I laugh when people in the media criticize the Catholic Church for its stance on issues like abortion, or euthanasia, or embryonic stem cell research or so-called gay marriage—as if her teachings on these issues are negotiable and subject to change.

The Bible says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever!  So if Jesus doesn’t change, how can we possibly expect his Church to change on these and other fundamental moral matters?

Is it always pleasant to hear the teaching of the Church?  No, it is not!  But remember, hearing the voice of the Good Shepherd is not always a pleasant experience!

And yet it can always be a healing experience!  It can be a healing experience if we respond to the Good Shepherd’s challenging message in a positive way.

People who rebel against the voice of the Good Shepherd do the kinds of evil things those 2 men did in Boston this past week; whereas people who respond positively have live-changing experiences—of the good kind!

Let me conclude my homily now by sharing with you an example of this from the writings of Archbishop Fulton Sheen.  Sheen, as many of you know, preached on the Seven Last Words of Jesus on many Good Fridays at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.  That’s the context of this particular story.  Sheen wrote:

After I had been preaching on Good Friday at St. Patrick’s one year, a woman came to the back of the main altar, her hair disheveled, a haunted look on her face, and [she] cursed me violently.  I said, “Why did you come in here?”

She said, “To steal purses.”

I said, “Did you get any?”

“No,” she said, “that second word of yours got me—the word to the good thief.”  Then she said, “Why am I talking to you, you blankety-blank?  You’ll just tell the cops.”

I said, “Why do the cops want you?”  She pulled out clippings from the Los Angeles Times and FBI folders.  Three of her confreres were in San Quentin, and the FBI was looking for her.  I asked her if she had ever been a Catholic, and she said yes, she had, up until the age of fourteen.  So I heard her confession, and she became a daily communicant.  But she was unable to work.  I supported her for about twenty years until she died.  Well, I was harboring a criminal, so after some time I said to her, “I must make known to the FBI that I know about you.”  She agreed, and I told the FBI.  I said, “You’re looking for a woman.”

“Do we want her badly?” they said.

I said, “Oh yes.  Her name is so-and-so.  She’s a daily communicant at St. Patrick’s.”

They said, “You have done far more for her than we or the prisons could have done, so we’re letting her go.”

That woman heard the voice of the Good Shepherd speaking to her through Bishop Sheen on that Good Friday many years ago—and it was a very unpleasant experience!  She literally hated what she heard—until she let the message change her heart and her life!

Then she experienced forgiveness, and mercy, and healing—and she got on the narrow road that leads to eternal life.

So did Augustine, eventually—which is why we now refer to him as “St. Augustine.”

May each and every one of us respond to the challenging voice of the Good Shepherd in the same positive way.