Homily by: Fr. Philip Merdinger
Recorded: 10/6/2019 (27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C)
Gospel Reading: Luke 17:5-10
Location: St. Lawrence Catholic Church and Newman Center at the University of Minnesota
Reflection Question: Reflect on the truth that God knows you better than you know yourself. He knows you perfectly, inside and out, through and through. What can you do to get to know Him more deeply?
This gospel probably doesn't sit very well with us as Americans. We don't like to be told what to do. We may have to accept it, but we don't like it. So we don't like it when Jesus uses words like 'what you are commanded to do'. So I think it's a good thing for us to ponder this gospel, given that reality. Though we are a funny people, aren't we? Many of us buy what somebody else tells us to buy. Many of us sing the songs that somebody else has placed before us. In some ways we do follow what other people tell us to do, because sometimes we're very afraid of not being cool or of missing out.
But when it comes to things of the spirit, then there can be a very different attitude. Who is God to tell me what to do? If I want to do it, I will, if I don't want to do it, I won't, and that is that. Another generation would have answered the question differently, but for our generation I think it's important for us to accept that. That's a reality to us. In many other areas of our life we're quite content to do what other people tell us to do or model for us to do, especially if those people hold a key. Imagine going to a party and not knowing the latest song. It's not cool. Right? You might just as well go home.
So we're content to do that, but when it comes to this, we're a rebellious people. We may have to do some things, but we resent doing them. So where does the gospel, therefore, fit in with our reality? How can we possibly say, "We are unprofitable servants. We have done only what we were obliged to do"? Well, dearest brothers and sisters, we know that there are exceptions to our rebellious spirit, and oftentimes those exceptions come to us because we experience love in a way differently than we've experienced it before in our lives.
I have known, and surely you do, I have known people who have given up serious drug use for the sake of love. I know people who have ceased boozing themselves to death because of love. I have known people who make great sacrifices willingly because of love.
I know people who submit to a rigorous discipline of life: a job that's demanding, hours and hours and hours and hours of it. I've known people who submitted to that willingly and freely out of love. So I guess when you want to look at the gospel, and the Lord says, "I, who am the Lord, I know what I can say to you about yourselves. I know what I can say to you about life. I know what I can say to you about a relationship with me," our tendency is [to say], "Who are you to tell me? I'll do it if I like, and if I don't like it, I won't do it. And who are you to tell me otherwise?"
The only thing that changes that, I think, is the experience of love. When you experience yourself being loved intensively by someone, that person's life begins to take on to you a power and a presence it would not have otherwise. [Yours] I say you're apt to give up long-cherished things, even personal freedoms that you can roam when you like and do what you like. You're willing to set those aside because you have experienced being loved, and you're self-loving in response.
It's a funny thing, isn't it, what love can do in terms of human relationships? Without love we're locked into, this is what I want. This is what I see. This is what I do. This is what I have. It's about me and how I am in life, and nobody, especially God, can tell me anything different. But once you experience being loved, and especially being loved by the Lord, then oftentimes things change inside our lives. And there's no way around it for many of us. You can't wish it the other way. You can't say, "Well, you ought to love God." That was the word of another generation, and we laugh at that. Who is God to tell me what I ought to do? I'll do it if I want.
So what will move me to do it? And there, I think, is the experience of being loved. Because when you experience the Lord touching your life with His interest, with His desire for you, with His understanding of you—nobody else understands you but the Lord. No other human being fully understands you. You're a mystery to them all—but you can experience the Lord understanding you. You can experience Jesus saying, "I know you. I know you in a way that nobody else does."
And in that knowledge of you, you can find a place for yourself that you're going to find very, very desirable. To be known by someone fully can be a very, very comforting and desirable thing. Not to wander through life wondering who really understands me, but to know that somebody does, and understands me perfectly, through and through. That often engenders, even in the imperfect experience of human life, that often engenders a lot of obligations that we freely and willingly take on because we've been loved.
And without love we simply resist them, or we resent them. We may have to do them, but we resent them. How many marriages there are that are filled with resentments, even if they continue on? So in order to understand the gospel, dearest brothers and sisters, one has to consult; where am I in the love of Jesus Christ for me? The church keeps telling me that He does love me. The church keeps telling me that He has laid out a life for me which flows from His understanding of me, and therefore His love for me.
What's my response to that? I think it's only when you experience that, that you begin to actually become obedient—obedient, funny word for Americans—obedient to the Lord, freely and willingly, as much as you would become obedient to the current set of music that you have to learn, because if you're going to the party Saturday night and you don't know what's being sung, you are not cool. You are not cool. You might as well stay home.
So it's only in love that you become obedient. The Lord places himself before us. He doesn't, unlike many organs of worldly life, he doesn't impose Himself upon us, but He does make an offer of Himself to us. He does actually say, "If you only knew who knows you and who loves what he knows, then when I say, 'It's good to do this and not that,' you're willing to say, 'Okay. I'll do that.'"
So without love, therefore, then the faith becomes a matter of obedience without love, and in our own rebellious times people just don't do it. Fewer and fewer people will do it, because they don't want to do it. So the gospel, therefore, appeals to the knowledge of somebody of you, because it's in that knowledge of Him, of you, that all the other things flow out. Then you become a person who is willing to say to the Lord Jesus, "You know me. What path should I follow? What paths are there for me that you see? Where is the person and persons in my life that you want me to love? Where are the situations where I expend myself sometimes wholly and completely till there's nothing left, because I want to, because I know that I've been loved, and therefore I want to give?"
There's no way around it, I don't think. That's why words like 'conversion', even though they're religious-sounding words, conversions are so important, because what they allow is a person to experience being loved. And without that conversion you don't know it. You may say you know it, but you don't know it. You may talk the talk, but you can't walk the walk, because you don't know it.
So conversion, what is that? Well, it's the heart that's opened out to being loved by the Lord Jesus. That's conversion. It's not just changing maybe patterns of life which are not helpful, maybe patterns of life that are sinful and all the rest. It's more than that. It's more than that. A few of us would convert on those terms. But if I know that I'm loved by someone, and that love reveals me to myself, that love opens out for me a way of life that I would not have otherwise, "Ah, yes." Then I say to the Lord, "What would you have me do? What would you have me do in my life? What are the things that you want me to embrace, take to myself, make mine? What are the things you say, 'Distance yourself from those. Don't let them rule your life. Don't let them take hold of you?’"
Love makes that possible. So each Sunday when we come together, we come together to hear the word of the Lord, which is, "I know you and I love what I know. And if you will allow my love to take hold of you, there's no limit to how high you can really go, and not on drugs. There's no limit to the sky that opens out to you, because you are being loved by me." So hear the word of the Lord, dearest brothers and sisters.
The second reading says this: "For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and love and self-control. So don't be ashamed of your testimony to the Lord, but rather embrace the gospel with the strength that comes from God." That's the life. So may we, you and I together, decide what we want to do with that. This Mass might be our last. This Mass, say to the Lord—hopefully I want to say—will you say it with me?—"Lord, you know me and you love me. In light of that, help me to do what you command, because you command it."
Fr. Philip Merdinger is the founder of the Brotherhood of Hope and the national chaplain of Saint Paul's Outreach (SPO).