November 3, Neighbor

In today’s Gospel Story (Mk 12:28b-34) Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” While this might sound nice, maybe simple, we soon learn there is nothing nice or simple about it. 

In the big picture we get very creative with rules and conditions that make it easy for us to make some people “others”, and therefore less that us. This is how armies train to fight the enemy. We can mistreat immigrants at our borders, judge and condemn our LGBTQ sisters and brothers, denigrate others to get whatever it is we want at the time. We determine that the Gospel might be ok for church, but not for real life, as I have been told a number of times. With these conditions we can “proudly” call ourselves a Christian country.

In the small picture, our personal lives, we “process” the Scriptures through whatever is going on in our life when we read or hear them. These days there is a lot going on. There is the nastiness all around us in the current political situation. Pope Francis called a Synod to try to move the world wide church to be more open to the Holy Spirit guiding us, and is facing much opposition. He also wrote an encyclical on the Sacred Heart of Jesus which is Jesus’ unconditional love for every one of us. There is the anti-LGBTQ+ feeling and action in many places, especially in various forms of religion including our own, shown in recent choices made by bishops. And there are always the often vicious self-appointed religion enforcers. So, what might this Gospel Story be saying today?

I look inward at myself, rather than try to tell anyone else how to live. A legitimate question here is if I am to love my neighbor as myself, do I love myself? Probably not in a real and healthy sense. My guess is I’m not the only person who feels this way. I have a wonderful opportunity these days to look at my life and readjust my priorities. Life is a journey. I am on a journey from God, with God, to God. If I so choose, my journey can be one of growth, or it can be one of anger, hurt, blaming, etc. One thing I have learned over the years, and seem to be learning ever more powerfully these days, that Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said, “how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Lk 11:13).  

Everything Jesus did and said in the Gospels can be seen in light of our journey. When in today’s Story he says ”love your neighbor as yourself”, he is not telling us to make dramatic changes in how we live so we can love everybody. Jesus said he will send the Spirit to remind us of what he taught. This means we can ask the Spirit to help us understand how to be his disciples in our own circumstances. I have found that the best way to do this is simply ask the Spirit to lead me without saying where or how, and go where this Spirit takes me, asking for humility and courage, because following the Spirit will take both.

On my journey I have often judged myself by the dumb things I have done, or experienced, too numerous to count, but embarrassingly easy to remember and hard to forget. The Spirit has been moving me away from all that, reminding me that if I had not done or experienced all the dumb stuff I would not be where I am now, and I like where I am now. Even with the dumb things a lot of good happened. I can’t just decide to change my behavior towards specific persons. That sort of thing doesn’t last long. It’s not about behavior modification. It’s about growth in the Spirit, letting the Spirit lead us through our everyday living, and watching as the way we do things changes. This has been a real experience for me. I don’t choose to change how I treat certain people or circumstances. I choose to ask the grace of being open to the Spirit and go wherever She takes me, and watch things happen. My part is I consent to what the Spirit is doing in my life. At times it’s pretty amazing.

As I let the Spirit move me towards accepting and loving myself, I notice changes in how I see and understand other people. The Spirit is taking the lead, always, and only, with my consent. An important part of prayer is along the lines of, “I consent to what you are doing in my life”. With this comes a certain peace — I am not alone on my journey. I become aware of Abba helping me through the folks I’m with every day. This is powerfully true as I look back at my past and see things which either made no sense at the time, or were very painful. Abba has been there all the time. This says something about where Abba is now as in various ways we deal with our past. We are not alone, and we are good.

As I come to know and love myself, I find myself coming to know and love the others in my life, with an openness that I have not known before. This is a process, not a state. I am exactly where Abba wants me to be at this point on my journey. This is true for every single one of us, with our pains and joys, our memories and fears, our past. We have to deal with our past, either on our terms or on its (very painful) terms. It’s better to do it on our terms, difficult as this may be. Abba is with us. Every one of us, as we are, is exactly as Abba creates us to be, which means as Abba wants us to be. When others can’t or won’t see this, their problem is with Abba, not with us. Abba is with us as we face the slings and arrows of life, and we all have those. Coming to a blessed awareness  of Abba in our life is something worth praying for. These days are difficult for all of us. Yet Abba is in all this with us, not as our agent who we expect to do our bidding, but as our companion, our safety. Our past is part of who we are now, and as difficult as it may have been, it is all Abba being with us in our now. A worthwhile prayer: “I welcome everything that comes into my life today because it is of you.” This is real.  Just sayin .  .  .