Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent
Our readings today have much to say to us about hearing, receiving, obeying, and passing on God’s Word. I submit that the integrity and fruitfulness of this fidelity on the part of God’s people depends on the extent of our love for God. May we learn love as the key to obedience.
Moses spoke to the people and said:
"Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees
which I am teaching you to observe,
that you may live, and may enter in and take possession of the land
which the LORD, the God of your fathers, is giving you.
Therefore, I teach you the statutes and decrees
as the LORD, my God, has commanded me,
that you may observe them in the land you are entering to occupy.
Observe them carefully,
for thus will you give evidence
of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations . . .However, take care and be earnestly on your guard
not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen,
nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live,
but teach them to your children and to your children's children."
I highlighted the verbs, hear, observe, and teach from the excerpt from our first reading. It’s pretty clear, isn’t it? We are to hear, which I connote with receive, God’s Word, observe (obey) it, and teach it to others, particularly to our children and grandchildren.
Last week, Ed and I attended a Parish Mission at another Catholic church in our Archdiocese. The speaker, in addition to teaching over the course of three evenings, also spoke and ministered to the students at the school associated with this particular parish. During one of his evening talks, he shared that he had met with the 7th and 8th students that day. He asked the young people, “how many of you believe in God?” Over 90% of the students responded in the affirmative. Then he asked, “how many of you know that God loves you and that your faith makes a difference in your life?” Only about 25-30% of the same students responded that they know God’s love personally and that they saw a clear connection between their faith and their everyday lives.
Hearing that last statistic, I sat in stunned and brokenhearted dismay. I thought to myself, “this is a Catholic school and almost none of the teenagers know that God loves them?!” (I have to assume this tragic statistic is not unique to this school alone.) As I continued to lament and ponder this phenomenon over the next few days, I realized that these students have been instructed in the faith – at school and hopefully also within their domestic churches. But they don’t know God’s love and they can’t make a connection between their faith and their lives. By the latter, I would assume that they’re not living their faith consistently, meaning they’ve heard but they’re not observing God’s Word. The missing link, I believe, between hearing and observing is love.
Without love, the teaching of the Church can be reduced in people’s minds to just another set of rules and regulations to be followed or not according to each person’s determination. As we pass along the faith to our children and grandchildren, step one needs to be to help them know, really know, the immeasurable yet highly intimate love of God. Our prayer for our children must echo the Apostle Paul’s for the Ephesians, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (emphasis added) [Eph. 3:16-19].
From today’s Gospel,
“Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill . . . But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”
Jesus came to fulfill the Old Testament moral law and the teachings of the prophets. This fulfillment finds its fruition in the New Covenant in Christ’s blood. This New Covenant is a law of love. We hear, observe, and teach God’s Word first by responding to God’s love ourselves and then passing on the faith in love. Think of it this way – a person can strive to be obedient to the scriptures and Church teaching out of fear or a basic desire to “do the right thing,” but if that person’s motivation is anything other than love, it becomes extremely difficult to persevere and to be perceived as authentic. But imagine this scenario – a person yields, submits, and surrenders to God’s love and is so overwhelmed by God’s gracious gifts of love and mercy, that s/he cannot help but live in that overflow. That person’s life becomes like a fountain, showering God’s love and mercy upon everyone around them. Imagine how contagious that would be to our children and grandchildren! Imagine how different our homes and our Catholic schools would be if our children saw the love of God in us on a daily basis. The starting point for instruction in the faith is love. Our children will only trust what we say if they can see it being lived out in love in our lives. May it be so. Come, Lord Jesus.
Elizabeth Wells