20140722 YEARNING FOR THE LORD
Scripture
Readings for 22 Jul 2014
Reading 1, Song of Songs 3:1-4
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.
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,
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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