seeking something more

One of my greatest frustrations in life is this concept about loving your neighbor. I mean, I’m kind to most people. I’m tolerant of people. I’m generally an agreeable person.  But being kind or tolerant or agreeable is not what love is. It’s a bit of it, perhaps, but only a very small bit.

My frustration is increased even more by the fact that I’m an introvert and avoid most people. I really don’t know a lot of people. By effect, I don’t really have many people to share this confusing thing called love. I mean, I guess, I can love people I don’t know in person, but that makes my problem even more complicated. How do I love people I have not seen or talked to? Do I end up just loving my conceptions of them, or can I really love them from afar? I know that we as the Church are one body, and distance is only some physical thing that is weak against our spiritual union. That is not my problem. My problem is that it’s hard to for me to separate abstract things from concrete things.

Last semester, just for fun, I read C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, and one of the things that I noticed is Professor Weston’s loyalty to humanity. This does not result in any goodness. As other characters from the book pointed out, Weston would happily sacrifice humans for the sake of this abstract concept of “humanity.” However, as Dr. Peter Kreeft said in one of his lectures. God doesn’t command us to love humanity. He commands us to love our neighbors. He doesn’t command us to love abstractions or concepts. He asks us to love real people with real faults and real value. He asks us to love each man and woman and child, not some vague idea in our mind of society. I was also reminded of this fact, of the need to love humans instead of humanity, when reading Centisimus Annus, or at least reading the first few paragraphs of it. John Paul II here over and over states that a big problem in modern society is that we tend to think of men as simply cogs in a machine, as simply parts of the State. That’s not what humans are according to God. According to God, each human being is someone made in His image, made with profound dignity, made so that one day he may share in the happiness and love of his Creator.

I don’t want to fall in that trap. Nice doesn’t cut it when you’re a Christian, and humanity has little value when you forget to value each human. Only love suffices and even overflows, and that I can only learn from God.

You indulge me, my King. You give me too much spiritual wine.

I went to Vigil Mass because I have to go an admitted students reception in University of Dallas tomorrow, and I am so glad to have heard the homily in that Mass.

As some might know, tomorrow is Divine Mercy Sunday, and so the focus of the homily was how Christ’s Mercy frees us from guilt and sin through the Church. The Gospel reading is John’s, and it points to the institution of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. (Jesus) said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit.Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” (John 20:19-23)

Fr. Pichard explained, in his notably sincere and gentle voice, how guilty the disciples must have felt in seeing Jesus. All of them, in exception of John, fled as Jesus was crucified, and Peter, the first pope, who promised he would protect Jesus unto his death, denied him three times. Jesus, knowing this immense guilt, said to them, “Peace be with you,” twice to calm their hearts, and after that sends them on a mission to share his peace with others with the proclamation, “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

The Church has continued this mission of peace, of relief from guilt with repentance and turning to Christ’s font of Divine Mercy. Every day at Mass during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the priest proclaims the words of Christ, “Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.” Even more, with the Sacrament of Reconciliation, priests practice the power which has been given by them by Christ, acting as instruments to absolve sins as Christ has entrusted them to do.

The second Sunday of Easter, Divine Mercy Sunday, is also a special remembrance of Christ’s Divine Mercy. The Church on this day offers an indulgence to those who “take part in the prayers and devotions held in honour of Divine Mercy, or who, in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament exposed or reserved in the tabernacle, recite the Our Father and the Creed, adding a devout prayer to the merciful Lord Jesus (e.g. Merciful Jesus, I trust in you!”).” The indulgence is plenary, or takes away all temporal punishment for sin, when the person does this “in a spirit that is completely detached from the affection for a sin, even a venial sin” and a partial indulgence is “granted to the faithful who, at least with a contrite heart, pray to the merciful Lord Jesus a legitimately approved invocation.”

Let us celebrate then, in this coming Divine Mercy Sunday, the Divine Mercy of Christ, an eternal font of forgiveness to those who repent and wish to reconcile themselves to him. The peace of God be with you all.

The Decree of Indulgence

Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Online Reading

Audio Reading

- From the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops