Memorial of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini
You cannot give away what you do not possess. And you cannot give away what you’re unwilling or unable to relinquish. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about those two corollaries. Our first reading today reminds us to receive God’s vast love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness and from that abundant fountain, live and serve in the overflow.
St. Paul exhorts Titus, “Remind them to be under the control of magistrates and authorities, to be obedient, to be open to every good enterprise. They are to slander no one, to be peaceable, considerate, exercising all graciousness toward everyone.” Why? Why is this behavior important? Is it because it is simply the proper way to behave, because it’s in keeping with decorum, because ultimately it benefits us? No! It’s because we ourselves are sinful and have the same tendencies and yet have been set free! Paul continues, “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, deluded, slaves to various desires and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful ourselves and hating one another.” Pause and consider Paul’s honest words. If I sin against my neighbor, ultimately, it’s because I have not come face to face with my own sinfulness and really allowed the healing power of the Cross to set me free. If I am unwilling or unable to be peaceable, considerate, and gracious toward everyone, perhaps it’s because I have not fully welcomed the Prince of Peace into my being.
I cannot give away what I do not possess. If I haven’t given God free and total access to my heart, my mind, my intellect, my will, my body, my soul, my spirit then I’m denying and depriving myself the totality of God’s gift. I’m refusing to fully receive God’s unconditional love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace. When I limit God’s presence and activity in my life, then I give reign to my concupiscence; my dysfunction and relative immaturity take over. I surrender to interior idols and their selfish and self-centered ambitions. Perhaps I do strive to be virtuous and to live a godly life, to be a “good Catholic.” The Church doesn’t talk about “good Catholics,” however – the Church calls us to sainthood, every single one of us. A saint, a “holy one” by definition, is not perfect, far from it! A saint-in-the-making is a humble person who recognizes her deep and urgent need for God, falls upon God’s mercy, and rises anew each day with a desire to share what she has received. A saint-in-the-making gives God free and total access to her entire being, allows herself to be flooded with the fullness and abundance of God and God’s gifts, and then lives her life in the overflow.
It's one thing to offer puny human love; it’s another thing to be a channel of God’s love to our neighbor. It’s one thing to try to muster up, manufacture, (or even fake) compassion in the face of human suffering; it’s another to offer the compassion of Christ from the well within us where we ourselves have known that compassion. Paul continues in our first reading, “But when the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, he saved us . . .” Have you allowed this shocking miracle of divine grace to shake you to your core? God saved you. God saved you. God saved YOU – not because you deserve it but because God loves you.
How could I, who do not deserve God’s love and mercy but have received it anyway behave unlovingly and unmercifully toward my neighbor? How could I label my neighbor as undeserving and withhold good things from them? My neighbor is undeserving – just like me!! But God loves each of us equally and unconditionally. The root of our sinful behavior, I believe, is a fundamental disbelief in the goodness of God toward oneself, an inherent refusal of God’s mercy for oneself, and not fully knowing ones supreme belovedness as a child of God. I mistreat my neighbor because truth be told I mistreat myself by refusing God’s mercy and grace and then withholding it from my neighbor.
Today, may we awaken to the immense, unmeasurable, eternal, unconditional love of God so that we may embody it in our being. And then, out of that deep well, that abundant fountain, may we delight in the overflow by loving and serving our neighbor in sincere and delirious gratitude.
I’ll see you in the Eucharist,
Elizabeth Wells