Yielding to Divine Love

Dear Friend,

Peace and all good be yours!

At a funeral Mass this week at San Roque, I sat in quiet after the homily and found myself drawn into the image of Jesus Christ on the cross. I didn’t hear a voice as St. Francis did once upon a time, but l did sense a call to pay attention. The words of a teacher from long ago came into my mind. He had likened Jesus’s death on the cross to a mother leaping into traffic to save her child who’d scurried off the sidewalk. The disciples depicted at the side of the cross appeared to me at that moment to be the ones whose lives were being saved. As an onlooker, I too, was somehow caught up in this scene of self-sacrificing love. 

The homilist had spoken of the power of God’s love surrounding us, as it surrounded the life of the deceased, a faithful (and eccentric) devotee of St. Rita, who loved the Lord and yet whose life was filled with physical suffering and emotional turmoil. The love of God surrounded her in all of it, a love beyond her fears. 

This Sunday St. Paul speaks of that love as “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” and proven “in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” This love sees beyond our narrow vision and desires nothing more than to scoop us out of so many life-threatening dangers and set us back on the path to life. The preface prayer speaks of this love revealed in Jesus’s encounter with the woman at the well: “so ardently did he thirst for her faith, that he kindled in her the fire of divine love.” Like the Samaritan woman, we yield to that love at every Sunday Eucharist. 

Gratefully,

Fr. Dan ofm, Pastor