You will hear people claim that Catholics spread the love around too much. Their love for Mary, the Saints, the Pope, etc., gives them a spiritual handicap in their ability to love Christ. Yesterday, during Holy Mass I was reflecting on how the flesh of Jesus is the very flesh that Mary gave to Him.
So I thought to myself, in a way, partaking of Christ is partaking of Mary. Then I had another thought along those same lines. The Saints that are in heaven are now mystically incorporated into His Body, and so in a way I am partaking of them as well.
[Insert faith police]
See! You cannot even have an intimate moment with Christ without Mary and the Saints. You have made them into idols that divide your time and affections.
[Politely asking faith police to sit down and listen]
And then it occurred to me that this dilemma is a false dilemma. In fact, it assumes a kind of grocery store view of love and the faith.
Like in the picture above, this view of love and the faith envisions Jesus as 'Aisle 7' at the grocery store of Christianity. Catholics, according to this view, spend too much time going down other aisles and therefore neglect the "Jesus Aisle".
The problem with this view is manifest in the analogy. Let's consider just a few Biblical examples.
Jesus taught that some people wouldn't even know they had loved Christ as much as they thought they had. "When did we love you?" they will ask. "When you did it unto the least of my brothers you did it to me" (Matt 25:40).
In another place, a zealous persecutor of the Church learned that when he persecuted the Church, he persecuted Christ (Acts 26:14).
Apparently, even while still on earth and imperfectly united to Christ, the Church and Christ share a unique relationship whereby when one is effected the other is also. When one of the least of his brother's wound is washed, somehow the water makes its way to glory. When his sister is visited in jail and momentarily healed of fear and loneliness, somehow Christ is the object of that encounter.
Yet, in heaven, we share even more intimately with this very purpose of salvation. Yes, Christ came to save us, but not simply to sanctify us on aisle 9 reserved for humanity while holy ping-pong gets an end-cap. No, Christ came to incorporate us into the very life of the Holy Trinity--the life of Love.
The epistle of Love, 1 John, talks about this mystery of our identity in Christ. The author introduces the third chapter by reminding the reader that God's love has made us children of God and that the world rejects us because it rejected Him. The letter goes on to teach us that when we attain to the beatific vision, we will understand this relationship--that we are like Him. Yet no longer through a glass dimly, somehow while gazing upon our Lord we will see our true eschatological ontology. This is the mystery of the Body of Christ and that which the Saints have already obtained!
This dynamic infusion of God's love in our hearts, the righteousness won by Christ, empowers us to act for "no one who remains in him sins" and "the person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous".
What might be these "works of righteousness"?
One word: LOVE
It's time to get Mary out of the shopping cart, out of aisle 12 or out of the tub of Christmas plastic statues you have buried away in a storage bin.
Catholics can love Mary, the Saints, etc., because the love of God has been shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Spirit. Catholics can love Mary, the Saints, etc., because in them they recognize the mystery of the Body of Christ. Marriage is an analog of this mystery, and the oneness and newness of that relationship portends only a glimmer of the reality of its spiritual analog. Thus, to love The Body of Christ is to love Christ. Therefore, let us throw aside the pagan and secular view of faith in the image above, and instead turn our eyes above and strain to see the heavenly vision in which by God's mercy and through our sure hope in Christ we can obtain to that fraternal and filial love that will sustain our very being for all eternity.
Amen.
Happy Feast of Pentecost to you all!
(when this whole thing started)
