Loving God and Neighbor

“May it be done to me according to Your word.” Luke 1:38

“His mother said to the servers, “Do whatever He tells you.” John 2:5

            The greatest commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27) tells us how we can make our way to heaven.  Love accomplishes and overcomes all things.

            In the first Joyful mystery of the rosary, the Annunciation, we meditate on the words of Mother Mary, “May it be done to me according to Your word.”  She is teaching us love, obedience and humility.  Because she loved God, she was able to be obedient and humble and we were able to have a savior who would redeem us.  I love meditating on this verse and in fact, making it my prayer.  I also want to be the handmaid of the Lord, though I fall so far short of what our Blessed Mother did.  She, who was full of grace, did not have sin in her.  I find myself repeatedly going to the confessional to beg mercy of our Lord and ask Him to lift me up again and again.

            Immediately upon finding out her cousin, Elizabeth, is also with child, she journeys to visit.  She spent 3 months with Elizabeth, helping her to prepare for the coming of John the Baptist.  Love of neighbor. 

            This isn’t the only time Mary shows us how to love our neighbor.  In the second Luminous mystery of the rosary, “The Wedding at Cana”, Mary tells Jesus there is no more wine.  She then very simply turns to the servants and tells them to do whatever He tells them to do.  She knows running out of wine at a wedding can be very embarrassing to the hosts and she wants to avoid that, so she simply turns to her Son.  Her command to the servants is also a command to us.  We should, at all times, do whatever He tells us. 

            My spiritual director once told me that the only correct answer when God asks something of us is Yes!  If we’ve even heard Him talking to us, that is not usually our first response.  We tend to think of ourselves and how what He wants is going to interfere with what we want for our lives, as if we know best.

           At times I can be impressed with myself for listening to what God tells me to do, being obedient to His holy will for me.  Unfortunately, the pride of sin is no help to my salvation.  It also dawns on me that it is not the things I’ve done for God I’ll have to answer for, but the things I did not do (in the Confiteor we pray, “…in what I have done and in what I have failed to do…”).

            Each night before bed I pray, “The Prayer for Daily Neglects” (I won’t put the whole prayer here, it’s on page 16 of The Pieta Prayer Book) and in essence, I am asking God to expiate all the sins I have committed each day and during all my life, to purify the good I have done badly each day and to supply for the good I ought to have done, but neglected to do.  Unlike Mary, I am not full of grace. 

            “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” That is my prayer, my daily prayer.  What I also pray for is holy hearing so I know what God is asking of me.  Then I pray for obedience and humility and an increase in faith, hope and charity.  No wonder we are told to pray without ceasing.

           “Do whatever He tells you.”  Definitely easier said than done, but not impossible!  What does He tell us?  Love God with all your hearts, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

            Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Francis Xavier.  He certainly taught us love of Christ and love of neighbor.  So did Blessed Mother Teresa, Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, St. John Vianney and in fact, all the saints.  With the help of all these beautiful saints and our Blessed Mother, we can learn to love God and love neighbor, just as Jesus taught us.

What's Obedience?

Obedience is a word you don’t hear very often anymore.  Why is that do you think?  Well, obedience is viewed as a lack of choice; we have to do something someone told us to do.  We lack a choice when we are told to do something and are expected to obey.   In our culture, we like nothing more than to have our own choices.

I was helping my friend put her kids in the van one day and she told her 5 year old daughter to get in and buckle up.  Her daughter continued to wander around the outside of the van.  My friend asked her, “did you hear me?”  I chuckled and said, “I’m sure she heard you, she just didn’t obey.”  My friend looked at me and said I had a good point; she’d never thought of it that way before. 

Ever get stopped by the police?  They don’t want you to just hear them talking, they want you to obey them.  If they ask for your license, you have to give it to them.  If they tell you to get out of the car, you have to get out of the car.  In other words, you must be obedient to that officer.

We do not like to be obedient.  We don’t want to think that we are “submitting” to someone else, because that would make us weak.  No one is better than us, why should we do what they tell us?  

Our society is turning further and further away from God.  Things that 40 years ago were only whispered about are now topics of popular, prime time television shows, subjects to be taught to young school aged children and topics discussed openly in public no matter who can overhear.   God is becoming a taboo subject.  In fact, more and more, Christians, and especially devout Catholics, are being labeled bigots and intolerant.  

We don’t like obedience, unless we are being obedient to ourselves.   We certainly don’t want to be obedient to a God who tells us what we can and cannot do because that means we’ll never have any fun.  We need to remember that in order to obey God, we must disobey ourselves.  What?!?  Not do whatever I want whenever I want to do it?  

God tells us in the bible how we should live our lives and He does that so we can live for eternity in heaven with Him.  He created each one of us, individually.  He loves each and every one of us, He values us.  We all have our faults, we all sin, we all make bad choices, but God doesn’t strike us down.  He gave us free will so we could choose how to live.  That also means we can choose Him or reject Him.  There will always be plenty of both kinds of people, those that choose to follow Him and be obedient (although not perfectly) and those who choose to deny Him: disobey Him.

The Christian life is not easy by any means.  We must make sacrifices; not the least of which is trying to follow God’s will, not our own.  In other words, obeying God and disobeying ourselves.  I know that’s a foreign idea to many and seems utterly ridiculous, but God alone leads us to true life.  Being obedient to God and following His holy will for us is true freedom.  

Each day, turn your will over to our Lord.  Ask Him to help you follow Him, to strengthen you.  Ask Him to grant you the grace to desire obedience, not to yourself, but to Him.  

“The natural life knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centeredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.”   C.S. Lewis