31st Sunday Year B - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2021

In response to the scribe’s query about the greatest commandment in the Law, Jesus quoted a verse from the Law that he and every other Jew recited daily: “Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord; and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” We have heard it before and we nod our heads.

But some of us, I fear, hear something else as well, which Jesus did not say; and it is something like, “Or else”. “or else” you run the danger of being punished by God in purgatory or even in hell — with the result that so many Catholics are basically frightened of God because they are frightened of purgatory or hell.

Is it possible really to love God — to love God with all our heart, all our strength — if we see God as a God who tortures people, or hands them over to the devil to do it for Him? If we believe that our God is a punishing God, I can’t see how we can possibly love God with anything like an exuberant, overflowing love, a love where we freely and joyfully want to give God everything.

Jesus insisted that God loves us, and he meant it. God knows that we sin; and God is equally insistent on forgiving us, forgiving us unconditionally. The Kingdom of God is “good news”. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”, even though he knew that “the world” would crucify his only Son — and in crucifying his Son would, effectively, break his own heart because God dearly loved his Son.

I know that people can quite deliberately choose not to love God, certainly on this side of the grave — and that God also respects their freedom. I used to think that God sends no one to hell; and that people put themselves there. But now I wonder… When people die and see God face to face, when they see God loving them unconditionally, can anyone freely hold themselves back from loving that God? Are the deceits of the devil more convincing than the sheer love of God?

All this gives me hope — hope, certainly for myself, but hope, too, for the whole world. The more I believe this, the more I am drawn to “love the Lord my God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind and with all my strength”. And for good measure, I begin to “love my neighbour as myself”. And, though I grow older and older, life grows better and better.