Blessed indeed is your Son, present in our midst when we are gathered by his love. [Eucharistic Prayer]
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A movie has been in theaters, and I’ve debated with myself about seeing it. It’s said to be intense. Martin Scorsese’s movie, Silence, is based on Japanese-Catholic Shusaku Endo’s novel set during the intense persecution of Christians in 17th century Japan. Because I feel for people who suffer, I feel called to see it. Because I dislike seeing people suffer, I don’t know if I can handle it.
While reading up on the movie, I came across a few articles about one of the actors. Andrew Garfield plays a Jesuit priest, Father Rodrigues, who goes into Japan to search for a missing Catholic priest. To prepare for his role, Garfield chooses to make a thirty-day retreat – a thirty-day Jesuit, Ignatian retreat. It’s an intense experience of putting oneself into a series of biblical scenes to better know God in the interior of one’s life. In the end, actor Garfield does more than prepare for his movie role – he surprises himself by falling in love with Jesus.
In an interview, Garfield says: “what was really easy was falling in love with this person … Jesus Christ. That was the most surprising thing.”[1]
It’s been said that life happens when we’re making other plans. Perhaps faith also happens when we’re making other plans. For actor Andrew Garfield, faith happens when he makes plans for a role in a Hollywood movie.
At a very basic level, Christian faith (Catholic faith) is about falling in love with Jesus –it’s about falling in love with God. And yet, even more basic is that the starting point for a Christian isn’t how much we love God. Rather, the starting point is always how much God love us – how much God loves you.
Our Christian faith isn’t simply about extending our hands to receive Communion. (That’s important, though.) It’s about extending our hearts and hands to enter a Communion of intense love with the One-who-is-love.
In today’s second reading, Saint Paul tells us about our Communion with God, writing that “eye has not seen, and ear has not heard … what God has prepared for those who love him.”
In today’s Gospel proclamation, at a first reading, Jesus seems to be speaking about rules. He tells us that adultery isn’t just an action, but exists even if we carry lust in our hearts. However, Jesus doesn’t want us to think that faith is about settling for the minimum or legal requirement. Instead, he wants us to understand that the Christian faith holds before us a high standard of love, because God’s love for you and me is not a minimum or legal experience of love.
God — the One-who-is-love — calls you and me to strive for God’s own high standard of love. Of course, we’re not God, so we will fall short of that high standard. But, we don’t push it aside. Time and time again, the Gospel we proclaim calls us to keep that high standard before us because it’s worth striving for. And if we think that God’s standard of perfect love is too high for us, we do well to remember that God’s mercy and forgiveness for when we fall short always, always remains at an equally high level.
Teenagers, this applies to you, too. Your mission — our mission — is to extend God’s love to the world. Your mission is to be a Sacrament of the One-who-is-love. Here at St. Thomas, we have a mission statement to remind us of our calling:
Inspired by the Holy Spirit, we follow Jesus by making disciples, serving others, and changing the world.
And when you love, you are changing the world. For example…
Last Sunday after Mass, a woman comes up to me about what someone did for her. (And she wants me to share this with you.) She’s gone through a rough stretch in life. Homeless, she overnights in her car at a local church where there’s a Safe Parking program. Here at St. Thomas, she sought assistance, and a parishioner listened, encouraged her to hang in there, and gave her a card to put gasoline in her car. With that gasoline, she resumed being an Uber driver, making money and earning a nice bonus. She continues to spend the night in her car at the safe parking lot, but she now sees a way out of where she’s at in life. Her hope is being restored. She’s grateful for the compassion she received here at St. Thomas.
When we love, we stand to change the world, even if one person at a time.
An actor prepares for a movie role and falls in love with Jesus. We gather in this sacred space so to fall in love with Jesus for another week. We then leave this church, ready to extend the love of God to another person, and to find that we are changing the world.
This is why I often ask you to invite a friend to join you here on a Sunday.
Make a friend. Be a friend. Bring your friend to Christ.
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[1] Brendan Bussin, America, “Grace Enough,” 1/23/17, www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2017/01/10/andrew-garfield-played-jesuit-silence-he-didnt-expect-fall-love-jesus.
