17th Sunday after Pentecost 23.9.07 Love God
Every problem in the world can be traced to a 'disconnection' from God. The solution to every problem is to re-establish that connection.
The Gospel today brings before us the command to love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind.
We find it hard to remember God, or easy to forget Him.
God is abstract, not immediately reachable through the senses. That’s one reason.
And the other reason is that we are distracted by current concerns. We have things weighing on our minds and we don’t have that freedom to soar aloft as we would like.
So when we come to pray we are easily distracted, and find it very hard to get into depth of prayer.
Yet we believe that God exists, that He is eternal and infinite and omnipotent. He can work any miracle, provide for any need. So why do we find it so hard to connect with Him if we believe these things?
Because we don’t believe them enough. We don’t have them locked into our hearts and minds to the degree that would block out every distraction or contradiction.
We need to get to know God better; to approach Him with such familiarity (reverent) that all other messages fall away.
St Paul shaking the snake into the fire is a good example (Acts 28,3-5), not to mention the martrys who died singing and joking.
God is real and His reality will win out over any other, but we have to get onto the right channel.
Once we are locked into Him we can deal with everything else. The hard part is getting that peace, that stillness before Him. Be still and know that I am God.
Loving God is to be in relationship with Him. It is like a relationship between people who love each other.
There is not always an intense emotional feeling; sometimes there is disagreement, and correction. A lot of the time it is just duty without any obvious reward, but the overall desire to please is there.
So loving God is like that. We don’t feel much most of the time; we just do what is right and trust that it is going somewhere, pleasing to Him.
Being a relationship it goes all the time. It is not something we switch on and off.
Thus we are not Sunday Catholics.
Nor are we only Catholics in church. Our whole lives must come under this relationship and God’s influence.
The fact that I love God must colour everything I do, and how I interpret everything that happens.
We can progress in this only if we make some effort. It will not happen by itself any more than I will learn to play the violin without doing anything.
The effort is that we must seek God out, think about Him, obey Him, call upon Him, meet Him in the sacraments, worship Him, pray to Him, listen to His words...
and if we do all this and we do it every day (or at least make some contact every day) we will come to love Him and all that goes with that.
(People think that because it is ‘religion’ it looks after itself. Like Religion in school was a bludge class because there was no exam. Oh yes there is an exam - the day we die.)
Prayer is not optional, any more than eating or sleeping. To neglect prayer is to lose the love of God, to die spiritually. Neglect your spouse and your marriage will suffer; the same for your spiritual life.
From that dead position many will declare that they still love God, but they know God only as a concept, not as a real Person.
We must not allow ourselves to become that dead; instead we come to life discovering the nature of God, entering a deeper relationship with Him. He will help us.
