The Clarion Call

In our social interactions, we generally seek reciprocity.  When we exchange gifts with another, we tend to exchange gifts of similar value.  It becomes a simple matter for us to judge the status of our relationship with another person by the value – either financial or emotional – of the gifts we exchange.  

God had given an incredibly valuable gift to you and to me.  More amazingly, God offers this same gift to every single person now living, to every single person who has ever lived, and to every person who is yet to live.  It is the gift of salvation, the gift of forgiveness, the gift of oneness with the source of all good, the source of all peace, the source of all joy, and our source of all holiness.

However, God’s gift is so far beyond what we can possibly imagine, we cannot easily discern its value.  It is not delivered to us in the mail, gaily wrapped with a card announcing the giver’s good wishes.  We cannot look up its price on the internet.  Yet God constantly seeks to make us aware of the gift and its value.  He has planted in each of us a seed of faith, to be nurtured and grown that we may know the magnitude of his love for us.

In the beginning, we know almost nothing of the gift, never mind its value.  We live as if we can have nothing other than what we can provide for ourselves.  We live in the self-centered world of ego, with no response at all to God’s gift.  We may not even be aware that God has gifted us all.

Graced by God in baptism and the sacraments, we begin to gain some understanding.  We sense, consciously or subconsciously, that is not our ego that supports us and sustains us, but rather something much greater.  In response, we offer our obedience, much as servants obey their master.

But as we mature in our understanding of this gift, our response becomes much deeper and richer than mere obedience.  We come to understand that God not only loves us with an unimaginable love, not only cares for us with an unimaginable providence, and not only forgives with an unimaginable mercy, he desires us to love and care for and forgive others as He has done for us.

In essence, God has entrusted us with even more than his great and mighty gift of salvation.  As church, we realize that we are like the stewards who not only obey the master, but also love and care for all of that is His.  Our self-centered lives of ego become other-centered lives of love.  Without this love, our obedience becomes a horribly insufficient reply to God’s great gift.

Jesus tells us this when he cites the greatest command – love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind…and love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:37-39).  As our exemplar, Jesus gives us a new command – “love one another as I have loved you” (Jn15:12).  Paul echoes this command by telling us that even with the faith to move mountains, without love, he is nothing.  Love is the obedience of the heart (1 Cor 13:2).  Love makes us slaves not of ego and sin and death, but of righteousness and life.

Since the very moment of his selection as Pope, Francis has consistently proclaimed this mission of love.  As church, he reminds us that we are the ones who have been entrusted with “still more” (Lk 12:48).  We are the stewards whom God has entrusted with the knowledge, the understanding, and the experience of His infinite, providential, and merciful gift of love.  Pope Francis urges us to respond in kind – care for the poor, bind up the wounds, and have mercy on all.

It is a clarion call.  It is a call to love.