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Click here for information on the Knights of Columbus Charity Golf Tournament held on Saturday, June 15, 2024.
Have you ever noticed how things look different depending on where you are sitting? Let me give you an example. I consider myself a good driver, I’m comfortable driving. I like to drive. So when the time came to teach my daughter to drive, I thought this will be easy. It wasn’t. After the first session she stormed into the house in tears telling her mother she could not drive with me in the passenger seat. You see, everything looked different from the passenger side. The curbs were a lot closer every time they turned a corner. The mailboxes seemed like they were in my face, I knew we were going to hit them. No matter how hard I pushed the floor on the passenger’s side, the car never slowed up. Things look different depending on where you are sitting.
It’s the same in our dealings with God, often we see things very differently than God. That is certainly true of God’s love and I think that is the point of today’s readings. Most of us grew up with the idea that we had to earn God’s love. We grew up with this image of a giant ledger where God marked down the times we sinned and the times we were good. And the “last judgment”was really a reading of that list and the whole idea was to have more “plusses”than “minuses.” We had to earn God’s love by how we lived. Live a good holy life and God loved us. Mess up, even just a little, and God was unhappy and his love withdrawn until we repented.
But God tells us over and over again, it’s not like that. I love you. Period. The letter from John says, “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.” Before we do anything, after we do something, always, God loves us. The Gospel starts with, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” Remain in my love, that means we are already in it. We don’t have to earn it, we’ve already got it. And we can’t lose it, we can only reject it. That’s what sin is, rejecting God’s love. Throughout the Scriptures we see a God that is overly generous, overly lavish, overly extravagant, overly patient with us. God is the absolute opposite of everything that is stingy, miserly, frugal, or sparing in what it does. God is prodigal.
The word “prodigal”means to spend or give away resources freely and recklessly, wastefully, extravagantly. Giving something on a lavish scale. That’s God and his love. We see this in the parable of the Sower and the Seed. God, the sower, goes out to sow and he scatters his seed generously, almost wastefully, everywhere - on the road, among the rocks, among the thorns, on bad soil, and on good soil. No farmer would ever do this. Who would waste seed on soil that can never produce a harvest? God doesn’t ask that question but simply keeps scattering his seed everywhere, overly generous, without calculating whether it is a good investment or not. And, it seems, God has an infinite number of seeds to scatter, forever, everywhere. We look at it and just see rocks and wasted seeds. God just sees places that need seed. God is “prodigal”beyond imagination.
What does all this mean for us? “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” We are challenged to be prodigal with our love. Love generously, freely, abundantly. Sure, sometimes our love falls on rocky soil, so what. Keep loving. The family we help never says, thank you. Keep loving generously. The money we gave someone for food gets used for cigarettes. Keep loving freely. The kids you sacrificed everything for don’t bother to call on Mother’s Day. Keep loving abundantly. Sure, you offered to drive the neighbor to the store, but not every week. Keep loving.
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. Love generously, love freely, love abundantly.
It’s the same in our dealings with God, often we see things very differently than God. That is certainly true of God’s love and I think that is the point of today’s readings. Most of us grew up with the idea that we had to earn God’s love. We grew up with this image of a giant ledger where God marked down the times we sinned and the times we were good. And the “last judgment”was really a reading of that list and the whole idea was to have more “plusses”than “minuses.” We had to earn God’s love by how we lived. Live a good holy life and God loved us. Mess up, even just a little, and God was unhappy and his love withdrawn until we repented.
But God tells us over and over again, it’s not like that. I love you. Period. The letter from John says, “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us.” Before we do anything, after we do something, always, God loves us. The Gospel starts with, “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” Remain in my love, that means we are already in it. We don’t have to earn it, we’ve already got it. And we can’t lose it, we can only reject it. That’s what sin is, rejecting God’s love. Throughout the Scriptures we see a God that is overly generous, overly lavish, overly extravagant, overly patient with us. God is the absolute opposite of everything that is stingy, miserly, frugal, or sparing in what it does. God is prodigal.
The word “prodigal”means to spend or give away resources freely and recklessly, wastefully, extravagantly. Giving something on a lavish scale. That’s God and his love. We see this in the parable of the Sower and the Seed. God, the sower, goes out to sow and he scatters his seed generously, almost wastefully, everywhere - on the road, among the rocks, among the thorns, on bad soil, and on good soil. No farmer would ever do this. Who would waste seed on soil that can never produce a harvest? God doesn’t ask that question but simply keeps scattering his seed everywhere, overly generous, without calculating whether it is a good investment or not. And, it seems, God has an infinite number of seeds to scatter, forever, everywhere. We look at it and just see rocks and wasted seeds. God just sees places that need seed. God is “prodigal”beyond imagination.
What does all this mean for us? “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” We are challenged to be prodigal with our love. Love generously, freely, abundantly. Sure, sometimes our love falls on rocky soil, so what. Keep loving. The family we help never says, thank you. Keep loving generously. The money we gave someone for food gets used for cigarettes. Keep loving freely. The kids you sacrificed everything for don’t bother to call on Mother’s Day. Keep loving abundantly. Sure, you offered to drive the neighbor to the store, but not every week. Keep loving.
I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. Love generously, love freely, love abundantly.