Homily 9 January 2005 By Fr. Hathaway FSSP Mater Dei Latin Mass Community
Holy Family
On Love Seeks Not Her Own
St. Paul writes,
“Love seeks not her own” (1 Cor. 13:5) which St. Alphonsus (The
Practice of the
Love of Jesus Christ) explains, “Those who love Jesus Christ seek to
detach
themselves from every created thing.”
All men desire to love another.In
the end, men will either give their love
to a creature or to his Creator.To love
God properly means to give God our whole heart; to love God and
everything else
in and for God; to do this we must, St. Alphonsus says, “Banish
everything from
our heart which is not God.
St. Philip Neri observes that any love
we give to earth is love taken from God.But how does one purge his love for earthly things?St. Alphonsus says, “by mortification and
detachment from creatures.”
There are some people who complain, “I seek God, but it’s no
use, I cannot find Him.”These need to
hear St. Teresa of Avila,
“detach
yourself from creatures then you will find God.”
If you seek God, and do not find Him, it may very well mean
that we have some undue attachment to a creature.St.
Alphonsus says some Catholics wish to
become saints, but in their own way.They want to love Jesus Christ but they don’t want to give up
their entertainments,
worldly dress, and dainty foods.These
do not want to abandon attachments to riches, to worldly honors, to the
desire
to be thought noble, learned, and more important than others.
If these become poor, they complain; if their self-esteem is
wounded, they flare up; if they suffer sickness, they moan.Thus, these can not find God because they
have one already.
St. Alphonsus says many Catholics desire to fly to heaven
but their attachments ground them to earth.Although it be only by a hair, as long as we are attached to the
earth
by undue love, we can not soar to God.
God wants all our love.Shall we give God all our love?Tiberius
Caesar wanted the Roman Senate to enroll Jesus Christ among the gods;
the
senate refused saying, “That god is too proud, he wants to be
worshipped alone
without companions.” So we do our
Lord
a disservice if we give Him a shared love.
God has revealed that He wants us to love Him above all
things; and so we must rid our life of anything which hinders loving
God more
perfectly.
To this end, St. Alphonsus composes a prayer for us: “Lord,
I prefer You to everything, to health, to riches, to honors and
dignities, to
praise, to learning, to consolations, to hopes, to desires, and even to
the
very graces and gifts that I may receive from You.In short, I prefer You to every created good
that is not Yyou my God.”
We must give our love to God and not to His creatures.Is this not a poor exchange?
Ven. L. da Ponte felt ashamed to pray, “Lord, I love You
above all things, above riches, honors, friends and relatives,” because
he felt
like he were saying, “Lord, I love You more than mud, smoke, and worms
of the
earth.”Are not all creatures in
comparison with God these things?
We must seek to be attached to God and not to creatures except
in and through God.
The prophet Jeremiah writes, “The Lord is good to those who
wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him.”(Lm 3:25).St. Alphonsus says this
is true of him that seeks God alone.
One day, a prince went hunting in the forest and met a
hermit.The hermit asked him, “What are
you doing?”I am hunting animals,” said
the prince; “And I am hunting God,” said the hermit.So is the main purpose of our life on earth;
while others passionately hunt for Walmart bargains, a better
investment, a new
facial cream, so must we be about hunting our God.
This requires a great effort; for our God tells us we must
love Him even to the hating of our relations.
“If any man come to Me, and hate not his father, and mother,
and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and even his
own life
also, he can not be My disciple.”(Lk
14:26)
St. Alphonsus says our Lord calls us to “hate” our relations
as many times they hinder our advances in divine love.“One’s foes will be members of one’s own
household.”(Mt 10:36)
Whenever St. Charles Borromeo returned form visiting his
parents he always lamented that he returned less fervent than when he
had left.
Besides possessions and relations, we must also be detached
from human respect.If we seek the
approval of man to the offending of God we will certainly damage our
love of
God; even the desire to please man will endanger our love of God.On the contrary, the saints wished the world
knew all their faults so that they would be seen as the wretches they
were and be
preserved in humility.
Besides possessions, relations, and human respect, we must
also be detached from our will.Recognizing the dangers of self-love, St.
Francis Xavier often quipped, “Conquer yourself” i.e., eat your peas
and pork
chops with an equal relish!
Self-will is the final ruin of souls.St.
Bernard said that if everyone would
resist self-will, there would be nobody in hell, “let self-will cease
and there
will be no hell."
Again, we must detach ourselves from creatures to love God
properly.This is a war of many fronts.First, we must battle desires for sensual
delights, if we mortify the eyes and ears and commend ourselves to God,
we will
win; second, we must battle desires for riches, if we love poverty, we
will
win; third, we must battle desires for ambition, if we love humility
and the
hidden life, we will win; fourth, we must battle what is most
dangerous, the
desire to rule ourselves, if we resign ourselves in all things to God’s
providence, the victory is ours.
Finally, we must love God to please Him as it pleases Him,
not as it pleases us… anything else is self-seeking.This way of love gives all to God; it flees what
is offensive to God; it embraces whatever befalls us in this life
whether pleasant
or unpleasant; it prefers God’s will to all things… thus, this divine
love
unites us completely with God.
After “Love seeks not her own,” St. Paul writes, “Love is
not provoked to anger” which St. Alphonsus explains, “Those who love
Jesus
Christ never get angry with their neighbor.”This is our next topic.