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Luke 6:27-38 for
Thursday of the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time
In today’s
Gospel, Christ calls us to follow our heavenly Father and show him to the world
through generosity that is boundless, unreasonable and careless.
God creates,
loves, and saves us with boundless, unreasonable and careless generosity.
Natural human
love normally has REASONS behind it.
Something in
another draws us; or something in us pushes us toward another.
Faith in God
who IS
Love gives different reasons to love others than the natural and normal human
reasons.
God creates
and loves us without needing us or owing it to us.
God loves us
for no reason but his own goodness and freedom.
Nothing in US
gives God a reason, attraction, motive, or obligation to love us.
Love that is DESERVED
or EARNED
does not come from God, whose love is totally free.
God’s love
has no needs, likes or dislikes.
God’s love is
absolute might and freedom to be faithful forever, no matter how detestable the
circumstances— even when we reject and deny him, even when we do evil.
God alone can
love in THAT
way.
God does NOT
love us for what we HAVE or not, what we DO or not, what we ARE
or not, HOW
we are or not.
We cannot
attract, deserve or obligate God’s love.
Nonetheless,
God HAS
chosen us, and God DOES love us.
Christian
faith gives our self-esteem and sense of dignity a foundation in the mystery of
God, who loves out of his own goodness and freedom.
So Christ
calls us to let go of all other sources of security, comfort, confidence and
self-esteem, because those are nothing before God.
God in Christ
calls us to esteem and love others— whether friends or foes— NOT
because of what they have, do or are, but because GOD esteems and loves them.
As Christ
said in today’s Gospel: Be merciful,
just as also your Father is merciful.
In that way
we live mercifully as sons and daughters of God.
Here in the
Eucharist of the Son of God, we eat and drink God’s merciful new and eternal covenant ... for the forgiveness of sins.
Thereby he
commands us to live his mercy in our thoughts, words and deeds: Do this in memory of me.
Turn.
Love. Repeat.
