Homily for September 7, 2008

Father Tom’s Homily
23rd Sunday
September 7, 2008

“Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” These words of St. Paul in the second reading today are meant to be the message to guide our lives.

Six years ago a special award was given to an old couple, Tony and Evelyn Messuri, from a small town in Idaho. They were given the Lumen Christi Award by the Catholic Extension Magazine. Lumen Christi is Latin for Light of Christ.
They were a couple who for years could never say “no” to any child who needed a temporary foster home.
They had five children of their own, plus three adopted children and over the years many, many foster children temporarily staying with them.
For many years they averaged about 15 children at a time living in their home. Their home had a ramp to their front door for wheelchairs.

Some of the foster children were newborns, some were mentally or physically handicapped, some were traumatized from being abandoned or badly treated.
Evelyn remembers, “A lot of people wouldn’t take some of these children, but our door was always opened to them.”
“They were little children who deserved a chance. It was a lot of work, but it was willing work.”

“When they came to us, they became our children. Often it was difficult to let them go. What we tried to do was to provide them a loving home. To wrap our arms around them and let them know they are loved.”

Over the 56 years of their marriage, Evelyn and Tony welcomed their own five children, three more by adoption and 387 foster children into their family.
Evelyn says, “I don’t know if we would have been able to do it, except that God was working with us.”
St. Paul tells us today, “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”
In the lives of people who have generous love for others, the gospel of Jesus Christ is powerfully preached.
Jesus taught us God’s love with his words, but also by what he did: healing the sick, lifting up fallen sinners, comforting the sorrowful, accompanying the lonely, and dying and rising for all of us.

One of his final teachings, given at the Last Supper, was, “I give you a new commandment. Love one another, just as I have loved you. By this love you have for one another, everyone will know you are my disciples.”
It was in the spirit of Christ’s new commandment that the Christian movement spread.

In the second century, Aristides, a non-Christian, defended the Christians before the Emperor Hadrian in these words:
“Christians love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. If one of them has something, he gives freely to those who have nothing.
“If they see a stranger, Christians take him home and are happy, as though he were a real brother. They don’t consider themselves brothers in the usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit of God.
“And if they hear that one of them is in jail or persecuted for professing the name of their redeemer, they all give him what he needs.
“This is a new kind of person. There is something divine in them.”

Aristides’ words, “There is something divine in them,” reminds me of the words of a song in the musical Les Miz. “To love another person is to see the face of God.”
St. Paul: “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another.”

St. John of the Cross: “In the evening of life, we shall be judged on love.”
Again St. Paul: “For the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”