The Honest Struggle
I cannot honestly say I love the Lord with all my strength, as tragic as that may sound. Because of all the things that I do and say and think, I cannot honestly say, “I love you, Lord, with all my strength.”
We can say. I love you, Lord, You are my strength.
What are the Commandments? Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, body, and love your neighbor as yourself. Or as Jesus changed, Jesus changed that second commandment. He said, love one another as I have loved you. He made it even tougher. Today we’ll stick with the first one, the first version.
Wisdom and Wasted Time
Before we begin, while I was reflecting and meditating, I was thinking of that comedian, Nate Bargatze. He does these skits on SNL where he plays George Washington. They’re hilarious, and they’re clean.
Anyways, in one of his shows, he says, “you know, when I was 20 years old, my friends would call me up and say, hey, let’s go out. Yeah, let’s go anywhere. I don’t care. Let’s just go. Like, we’ll set the town on fire. Let’s go, let’s do it.
And he says, but when you’re 30 years old, then you say, where are we going? What time are we coming back? I’m driving separately.
Then when you’re 40, you’re like, why did you even call me?”
Why does that come to mind? Because Lord, if I could just have the wisdom I have today at my age that I could have had when I was in my 20s, I would not have wasted so much time pursuing so many different things, like my career, my money, my possessions, all these things.
Fill me, Lord, with your wisdom.
Sooner rather than later, you want to do a great service to your children and grandchildren? Tell them over and over: The things that you pursue in this life, money, career, possessions, big house, big pool, they’re not going to make you as happy as you think.
Love God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself. This is our core belief.
The Daily Gut Check
Gut check it every day. Ask yourself, how am I doing? Be honest with yourself, how am I doing?
Because today, it’s easy to say, I believe in God. But it can be very shallow. Because if we believe in the Christian God, it means a commitment for life. It means committing your life to what?
But Jesus did not hide it. Jesus made it very clear. Pick up your cross and follow me.
So it’s a commitment to picking up your cross. It isn’t a commitment to having an easy life, to avoiding any difficulties, or any challenges, or any pain and suffering. It means to commit yourself to being something very important in this world.
So there are three points, three points I want to make.
Work-Life Harmony, Not Balance
The first one, it almost sounds like the two commandments sound like this work, ever hear of this work-life balance? This is really trendy now, right? Work-life balance. Balance the two. As if one is opposed to the other.
The better way of looking at it is this work-life harmony.
Whatever you do in your life, you have to be passionate. Do what you feel passionate about. Do it, don’t worry about how much money you’re gonna make. Just do what you love doing.
I love being a priest. Is it hard? Yes. Am I happy every day? No. If the bishop would give me six months of vacation, I will take it. But do I love what I do? Yes. And am I passionate about what I do? You can tell.
If you want to do another favor to your children and to your grandchildren, tell them. You have to do your passion.
Why are these two the great central core of our belief, of our values? Because if you love God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul, then that is going to give you the strength and the joy and the passion to love your neighbor.
When you finally decide to love your neighbor and to help those who are in need and to give an encouraging word or support, when you start doing something for others and it makes you feel good and passionate and loving, and wow, my life is full of meaning and fulfillment, then it’s going to bring you back to the first one. You’re going to say, thank you, Lord, for giving me this opportunity to serve you.
The two feed off of each other. It’s not work-life balance. You don’t say, “OK, how much am I going to love you? How much am I going to give to you?I need some for myself.” No. It really helps to go 100% in both. You’re going to feel what we all want to feel, like we’ve made a difference in this world, that I am here for a reason.
What You Can Control
We are talking about love.
God isn’t asking us, go and make someone a saint. Go and give someone a job. Go and make someone who’s poor rich. No. You know why? I can’t do that. I can’t make decisions for other people.
Just between us, the Catholic schools, they have this model, saints and scholars. That is the biggest nonsense. Saints and scholars, really? How can I make someone a saint? It depends on them as well. What can we do as a Catholic school that they were loved. I can control that. Because if someone doesn’t love the children, you’re out. But how can I make it that everybody, every student is a saint or a scholar? It’s impossible. How can you have a vision statement that you can’t control?
Anyways.
We’re talking about love. Do I love God? Do I love what I am doing? This is the gut check. Do I love God? And do I love what I’m doing?
This is a reminder that if I don’t, okay, stop wasting your life and stop wasting your time.
Love Penetrates the Unknown
Love is profound. It penetrates the unknown. This is the second point.
Love, the reason why God uses love so much is because, you know why? Because love penetrates the unknown.
I saw this graph. Imagine a big circle. At the very edge of the circle, there’s a line that goes through it. Just at the very edge. It just clips a small piece of the circle. In it, it said, the circle represents what people are going through in their life. The little piece that’s cut off by the line is what you understand about it.
Isn’t it odd that all we see is the outside of people when all the decisions are made from the inside? Isn’t that odd?
What does it mean? It means I’m not here to understand everything. I’m here just to love. I’m here to help.
Love is profound, it’s not shallow. It is what covers a multitude of sins. Love covers the unseen. It covers the unknown. It makes a huge difference. It helps us to open people up to be able to share their experiences.
When you feel loved, what do you do? What’s the first thing that you do? Can I talk to you, please? Here, do you have five minutes? Can I share something with you?
Love opens the heart.
The Laws That Govern Our World
In this world, in the mechanical, physical world, we are governed by the laws of physics. That’s it, the laws of physics. We’re not gonna get to Mars unless we have the proper thrust, the proper equipment, the proper technology, the proper aerodynamics. You can pray all you want, but you cannot get to Mars if you don’t do it and respect the laws of physics. That’s for the physical world.
For the spiritual world, you will never have harmony and peace unless you respect the laws of God. Love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself. We will never achieve the harmony and the peace that we are looking for if that doesn’t happen.
The Church as the Soul of the World
What is the church? In this modern age of the 21st century, the church is so archaic and so old, and why doesn’t it modernize, and why doesn’t it have a little cafe latte spot in my pew?
Why doesn’t Father come out with smoke and all the lights and all the show and all that stuff? This is boring. If you go out to that other place there, you know, they got the music, they got the lights, they got the entertainment, they got the kiddies corner over there for the playground.
I’ll tell you why. The church is in the business of serving people.
Why don’t you talk about politics? We are here to help people in politics have a soul. Our mission isn’t to create a political party, the Catholic Church party, or the Christian party.
Our mission as a church is to serve people, to give everybody a soul, to give the doctors a soul, to give the politicians a soul, to give the scientists a soul, to give the engineers a soul, to give the military a soul, a Christian soul. To form others.
The church is the soul of the world. If you think about it, the church is called to be the soul of the world. That matters more than any latte.
Conclusion
This is our core belief. Love God above all things, and love your neighbor as yourself.
Check it every day, check it every day. Pursue it with all your might. Pursue it, because if you don’t, you’re wasting your time. Pursue it all the days of your life.
Surround yourself with people you love and take them on that ride, regardless of how old you are.
Amen?
Amen.
