Tuesday, 23 December 2014

20140722 YEARNING FOR THE LORD

20140722 YEARNING FOR THE LORD  

Scripture Readings for 22 Jul 2014

Reading 1, Song of Songs 3:1-4

1 On my bed at night I sought the man who is my sweetheart: I sought but could not find him!
2 So I shall get up and go through the city; in the streets and in the squares, I shall seek my sweetheart. I sought but could not find him!
3 I came upon the watchmen -- those who go on their rounds in the city: 'Have you seen my sweetheart?'
4 Barely had I passed them when I found my sweetheart. I caught him, would not let him go, not till I had brought him to my mother's house, to the room where she conceived me!


Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 63:2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9

2 Thus I have gazed on you in the sanctuary, seeing your power and your glory.
3 Better your faithful love than life itself; my lips will praise you.
4 Thus I will bless you all my life, in your name lift up my hands.
5 All my longings fulfilled as with fat and rich foods, a song of joy on my lips and praise in my mouth.
6 On my bed when I think of you, I muse on you in the watches of the night,
8 my heart clings to you, your right hand supports me.
9 May those who are hounding me to death go down to the depths of the earth,


Gospel, John 20:1-2, 11-18

1 It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved away from the tomb
2 and came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb,' she said, 'and we don't know where they have put him.'
11 But Mary was standing outside near the tomb, weeping. Then, as she wept, she stooped to look inside,
12 and saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head, the other at the feet.
13 They said, 'Woman, why are you weeping?' 'They have taken my Lord away,' she replied, 'and I don't know where they have put him.'
14 As she said this she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, though she did not realise that it was Jesus.
15 Jesus said to her, 'Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?' Supposing him to be the gardener, she said, 'Sir, if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and remove him.'
16 Jesus said, 'Mary!' She turned round then and said to him in Hebrew, 'Rabbuni!' -- which means Master.
17 Jesus said to her, 'Do not cling to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to the brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'
18 So Mary of Magdala told the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord,' and that he had said these things to her.

YEARNING FOR THE LORD  
SCRIPTURE READINGS: SONG 3:1-4 OR 2 COR 5:14-17; JN 20: 1-2. 11-18
http://www.universalis.com/20140722/mass.1.htm
Do you yearn for the Lord?  For many, the answer would be negative.  Why is that so?  Because they cannot see Him or even feel Him.  He does not seem to be real.  They do not even know whether He exists; much less whether He loves them. Perhaps for some of us, we do yearn for Him. Now and then we experience the emptiness in our hearts and like the psalmist we cry, “My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God. O God, you are my God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.” And when we cannot find Him or experience Him, there is always the temptation to replace that emptiness with things and the loneliness with activities and people.
However, for those of us who are active in Church and in our faith, we might profess that we yearn for the Lord and that we love Jesus.  But how much do we love Him?  Do we love Him like the way we love our spouse and our intimate friends?  Do we yearn to be with Jesus, think often of Him and desire to talk with Him as much as we do with our beloved?  How is it that we have more passion and longing to be with our loved ones than to be with Jesus?  The truth is that our feelings for Jesus are very much different compared to our passion for our friends.  Clearly, we prefer human love to divine love.  Perchance, our love for Jesus could be more from the head than from the heart.  Like it or not, it is easier to love someone who is real, in the sense that we can see, feel, touch and hear, because we are constituted of body and soul.  The proverb says, “out of sight, out of mind!”
How is it that we do not have the same yearning for the Lord, the kind of intense passion for Him as Mary Magdalene did?  Love, for Mary Magdalene, was certainly not just a verbal declaration of love, or even an intellectual thought that she loved the Lord.  The gospel recounts her deep love for Jesus and her desire to be with Him, to see Him and be in union with Him.  Indeed, since the day Mary Magdalene encountered Him and received from Him the unconditional love and mercy of God, she could not stop loving Him more and more.  She was always following Him in His ministry, supporting Him and attending to His needs.  She was totally faithful to the Lord, even clinging to Him when His disciples abandoned Him.  She was there with Jesus at the foot of the cross, watching Him die a cruel death.  Her heart must have been so broken when Jesus suffered and died before her very eyes.  It was therefore not surprising that she was there at the tomb of Jesus, hoping to see Him again or at least be with Him.  Hence, we can imagine the horror and great disappointment when His body was not to be found.  She could only cry like a lost child, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they have put him.”  No words of assurance could comfort her.  She was so deeply immersed in her passion for Jesus that she was oblivious to anyone and would not listen to anything or any voice except for the voice of her beloved!
Indeed, this is passionate love!  This is the love between two human beings as described in the first reading from the book of Song of Songs.  Intense passionate love is described as nuptial love. The bride says, “On my bed, at night, I sought him whom my heart loves. I sought but did not find him. So I will rise and go through the City; in the streets and the squares I will seek him whom my heart loves.” Unless we love the Lord in this manner as God loves us, so intensely, like a man for a woman, we do not understand the nature of love.  Union is the consequence of love.
Why is it then that we do not have this intensity of love for Jesus, like Mary Magdalene, St Paul and all the saints did?  They all expressed their desire to be in union with Jesus in passionate and affective terms.  The key to intensifying our passion for Jesus is dependent on how much we have known Him as a person in His humanity. This is so true even in human relationships. When we are physically intimate with a person, we tend to long for the person more.  When two persons seldom spend time with each other physically, sharing with each other one’s feelings and thoughts, or doing things together, their feelings for each other will eventually fade.  This will then be reduced to an “intellectual love” for each other.  As time develops, emotional distancing will give way to intellectual distancing, as they no longer feel and think alike.  This is the beginning of the end of the romance.  When we no longer feel with the other person, the relationship will become lukewarm, then indifferent, cold and then estranged.
Hence, we must learn from Mary Magdalene if we want to strengthen our intimacy with the Lord; our passion for Him.  We must fall in love with the humanity of Jesus as Mary Magdalene did.  Her passionate love for the Lord arose from her personal contact with Him and her being loved by Him so unconditionally and totally, considering the fact that she was an insignificant person in the eyes of the world.  She was trapped by sin.  The principle of life is that love begets love.  Her life was completely transformed by the love and mercy shown to her by Christ.  Set free by the Lord to love, she became an apostle to the apostles. The evangelist noted, “So Mary of Magdala went and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her.”  This is why Pope John Paul II insistently and repeatedly reminded us that the way of Christian prayer must be Christocentric.  It must be founded on the contemplation on the humanity of Jesus.  In his apostolic letter, “Novo Millennio Ineunte”, he invites us to contemplate on the humanity of Jesus as the program for all times.
But doesn’t this contradict what Jesus said to Mary when she tried to cling to Him?  Jesus said, “Do not cling to me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father. But go and find the brothers, and tell them: I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”  Indeed, this is true.  Our love for the Lord must go beyond physical and sensual love to a spiritual and intellectual love.  We cannot cling on to physical love alone in any relationship, even in human relationships.  We must move on to a higher plane of love, namely, that of the soul and the spirit, the mind and the heart.  To rest on the level of physical love is unhealthy as it suggests an egoistic love, centered on oneself, one’s needs and gratifications rather than the other person.  Such a love is not a loving of the other but making use of the other for oneself.
Thus, it is not sufficient to remain on the physical aspect of this relationship.  One must purify that love and sublimate it to a higher level of intellectual, spiritual and mystical love.  This is what Jesus was asking of Mary.
Only when we have arrived at this level, will we be ready to enter into the dark night of the Spirit.  On this level, even when we do not feel His love, we still will love Him no less.  We demonstrate this mature and higher form of love in the way we love others. It is a love that demands death to oneself for others because we see Christ in all.  This is the full proof of our love for Christ.  As St John wrote, “We are to love then, because he loved us first. Anyone who says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother is a liar, since a man who does not love the brother that he can see cannot love God, whom he has never seen.” (1 Jn 4:19f)  So the final criterion of whether we truly love Christ is not even having sentimental feelings for Him but whether we love Christ in others and not just merely loving others.
Does it mean that we no longer yearn for Christ or even those whom we love?  Or course we will still long for union with Christ and all our loved ones who cannot be with us physically now.  But loving them spiritually and being in union with them in mind and heart, we know that one day we will eventually meet in heaven where we will all be reunited in Christ.  This pining however is not one of sadness or a self-centered craving, but a reaching out to the other.
In the meantime, we continue to sustain this hope in faith and in love through intimacy, brought about through constant prayer in Christ.  Only in such intimate moments with the Lord, can we hear the Risen Christ calling our name as was the encounter of Mary Magdalene. To be called by name by the Lord will sustain us, knowing that we are unique and important to Him.  Let every Eucharist that we receive be also an encounter with the Risen Lord who says to us, “This is my body given up for you … This is my blood shed for you.”  Through the Eucharist, we are already having a foretaste of our communion with the Lord, for we know that if we receive Him personally, consciously, in purity of mind and heart, and worthily, He and His Father will come to dwell with us through His Spirit. 

WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP OF SINGAPORE
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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