Called To Respect

We are called to respect others the way we would like to be treated.  Otherwise, when we fail to respect others, we are telling them that they are not worthy of respect.  In time, they come to disrespect themselves, as they slip into a downward spiral in which they get used to abusing themselves.  We can think that we have no responsibility for others' actions, but when we fail to build up people, we choose not to lift them up, we keep them down, and we push them even further down.  

Often I think about the people who sift through the garbage and recyclables in the dumpsters in the parking lot outside my window.  They usually sort through it around 5:00 a.m.  I've imagined that they come at that time because they want to get what they can out of it before the garbage truck comes around 5:30 a.m. to empty the dumpsters.  

I've imagined talking with them when they are going through the garbage and the recyclables.  I've envisioned saying something to them like, "I'm not going to try to stop you from going through the garbage.  You can do so.  I'm not disturbed by the sound.  I am deeply saddened that human beings care for each other so little that some people are reduced to rifling through garbage.  I believe you were meant to be treated with more dignity.  We are supposed to treat you with more respect."  
Homeless folks have told me and shown me that they collect recyclables to exchange for money.  Earlier this week, I asked a homeless woman, who I'll call "Kelly" here, what she was going to buy with the money she was going to get from the recyclables she had.  She told me she was going to buy cigarettes.  

In addition to nicotine, homeless folks also fall prey to illicit drugs.  Kelly has confessed to me that she has taken methamphetamines.  Meth is inexpensive, so homeless folks can get it.  

Although meth doesn't cost much money, homeless folks pay a high price for it.  In using it, people become less than they were meant to be.  

When we do not acknowledge the presence of a homeless person, we treat them as less than they actually are.  By acting as if homeless people do not exist, we rip them down just like an illicit drug tears them down.  

In addition to meth tearing people down, people use it in the first place since they are down.  Kelly has identified her low self-esteem as the root of her problems.  She admitted to me that she does things which she thinks will make her feel better, but which don't help.  She has acknowledged too that she tries to numb herself to prevent herself from feeling what she doesn't want to feel.  Kelly does not want to feel the disrespect that has been shown to her.  She would rather turn aside from the pain inflicted on her.  

We cannot justify ignoring and casting aside those who are homeless or otherwise poor.  We cannot in good conscience tell them that they must accept their lot, for in doing so we reject our duty to love them.  

In loving homeless persons and showing them respect, we build them up.  We help them become more than they have been.  By treating homeless persons with dignity, we help them to rise above the suffering they have endured.  If any of us refuse to help our neighbor, whether homeless or not, we are ignoring the lessons of love presented to us.  

If any of us, whether we are homeless or rich, only try to escape from pain, and never embrace suffering, we are refusing to learn from what life presents to us.  Through life's hardships, God seeks to mold us, just as He does by way of life's blessings.  

God asks that we agree to become who He created us to be.  We are called to become who God made us to be.  

We find out who we are as we endure life's challenges.  If we reject what we have to learn in what unfolds in our lives, we refuse to accept what God is trying to give to us.  If we decide not to seize the chance to love our neighbor, we throw away the gift God is giving us.  

Yet God made us to learn and grow through endurance, which is a reflection of love.  To become more than we have been, by obediently submitting ourselves to the will of God, we show who we are.  By loving our neighbor, we demonstrate who we are.  

In the film "Restless Heart," Saint Monica says to her son, Saint Augustine, "Don't forget who you are."  As he continued to ignore the call from God to become who he really was, she admonished him to embrace his true identity, where he would find deep joy and happiness.  

God made us to be happy and joyous.  We find deep joy and happiness when we turn towards God, and submit ourselves to Him, and praise and glorify and adore Him, and love our neighbor.  We do not realize this is why God made us.  We must not forget who God made us to be.  

We are to use what God has given to us to bear much fruit to His glory.  We are to use the gifts God has given to us.  

Kelly told me that at one point she had been in college.  She has told me that she would like to go back to school and get her Bachelor's Degree.  

Kelly realizes that she is meant to be more than she has been.  She knows that she must respect herself.  In loving herself, she can become who God has always meant her to be.  In loving each other, we become who God created us to be.  

God calls us to respect each other.  When we respect others, we invite them to respect themselves too.  

We respect and love ourselves.  We wish to be respected and loved.  Thus we should respect and love others, since we wish to be respected and loved.  Seeing that we too would like to be respected and loved, we come to be able to love our neighbor as ourselves,* just as Jesus taught us.  

* Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31; Luke 10:27; Leviticus 19:18; Romans 13:9; Galatians 5:14 

Keep On Loving

Today I write to you of love.  I write to you about the love of a woman for a man.  I have seen it with my own eyes, and so I testify to it.*  As usual, I write to you of what I know.  And as I typically aim to do, I witness to how the Gospel is being lived out in front of me.  

I see my neighbor forgiving my neighbor.  I recognize my neighbor consenting to the love of God being shown through her.  I hold in high regard when my neighbor lets God love others through her.  We love our neighbor when we forgive our neighbor.  Jesus instructed us to keep forgiving our neighbor.  Saint Peter asked Jesus, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him?  As many as seven times?"  Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times."**  God calls us to forgive our neighbor over and over and over again, and to keep on forgiving our neighbor after that.  We are to keep on loving our neighbor despite how he or she keeps falling.  

I have seen this tireless love and devotion shown by a particular woman to her boyfriend here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Countless times I've interacted with a certain homeless woman, who I'll call "Jocelyn" here, and with her homeless boyfriend who I'll call "Jonny" here.  Despite Jonny's repeated self-defeating choices, Jocelyn has remained with him.  

I had heard that Jonny was addicted to a hard drug.  Someone had also told me that Jocelyn could easily stop being homeless.  This person opined that Jocelyn was obstructed from moving out of homelessness because she was persistently staying with her boyfriend.  This person insinuated that Jocelyn could help herself, but she was refusing to do so because she was insisting on remaining with her boyfriend.  

Essentially Jocelyn has kept putting someone else before herself.  She has kept loving her neighbor without counting the cost to herself.  

Jocelyn imitates Jesus.  Jesus gave Himself up on the Cross to save us, who are sinners.  

While He was on the Cross, Jesus was mocked by the soldiers who told Jesus to save Himself if He was the King of the Jews.  The leaders who were there jeered at Him that if He was the Messiah, that He should save Himself.  One of the two criminals being crucified next to Jesus also abused Him, demanding that Jesus save Himself as well as the two of them.***  Jesus could have saved Himself but He did not.  Rather than save Himself, He died on the Cross from love of us, praying for us even though we had ignored, mocked, disrespected, tortured and abused Him.  

It might seem foolish not to save yourself when you can.  Maybe it seems like deciding to die when you can live.  Yet in the perspective through which you choose to view the world, you determine whether your outlook is setting you on a path to being saved or to being lost, being on the road to life or to death, both for yourself and for others.  Saint Paul explains that "the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."****  

Those who do not love will perish.  People who do not give of themselves are doomed.  When you love, you choose to be saved.  When you persist in loving, despite all indications that your demise is imminent, actually you are working not only to be saved but also so that others may be saved.  When you love despite all evidence suggesting that your love is ineffective, you are loving from faith.  When you love not paying attention to appearances, you are putting credit in faith.   

The medieval mystic Julian of Norwich assures us, "All will be well."  When we say that all will be well, despite what we see to the contrary, we make an assertion of faith.  

If we truly have faith, we are fixing the foundation of our souls, our hearts, our minds and our bodies on what we do not see.  As Saint Paul wrote, "We look not to what is seen, but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal."***** 

Do not think that I am speaking merely of rewards that we will see only in the next life.  Certainly here I address the glory which will be revealed to us in the life to come.  Yet if you have faith and trust in God, you also reap the fruits of that faith now in this life.  I am not speaking in hypothetical terms, trying to assure you of things which I believe but have not seen.  As I have already said, I tell you of what I have seen.  

I have seen the change in his appearance.  I have seen the deep crevices disappear from Jonny's face over the last few weeks, deep lines which are symptomatic of abuse of hard drugs.  

I have witnessed the change in his behavior, how this month he walked up to me and greeted me with a wholeheartedly warm embrace.  Months ago he would barely acknowledge my presence upon crossing paths.  

Upon greeting him a few weeks ago and asking him how he was doing, I heard him excitedly proclaim to me, "Doug, I've gotten a job!"  After I had witnessed all of these and other signs of improving health, Jocelyn told me, "He stopped using the needle weeks ago."  

Jocelyn kept loving Jonny.  She did not give up on him.  She did not like what she saw, and she told him so.  I was present one day when in public she loudly and vehemently made clear to him that he did not look good, and that she was displeased with his behavior.  Yet she did not abandon him.  She kept loving him, despite his appearance, which was not promising.  Although she was not encouraged by his behavior, by what she saw, she moved forward in faith, in the hope she had for a better future.  

For centuries people have trusted in God, having hope in God's promise, having confidence that God can and will work wonders.  Indeed God will show us marvels if we will but have faith in Him.  In the fourth century, Saint Monica prayed indefatigably for years for her son Saint Augustine of Hippo.  After years of praying for him, he experienced a conversion: his life was reformed and he repented of his sins.  Having such faith in God, and being miraculously transformed from such faith, we enter into a new kind of life.  In the film "Restless Heart," Saint Monica says to her son Saint Augustine, "We are already living in eternal life."  Saint Monica and Saint Augustine lived such lives of faith in God, with such hope in His promise, that even in this lifetime, they had already begun living in eternal life.  

In this time, right now, the work before us is that of faith and hope, for we hope for what we do not see.******  The work of love is also now.  Jesus instructed us to love one another as He has loved us.*******  As Jesus has loved us, and died for us, now we are to die to ourselves for our neighbor, so that we and our neighbor may be saved.  Now we are to love out of faith and hope.  

Later, in the next life, we will see the fruits of our faith and hope.  In the next life, faith and hope will be realized in the love we will then experience.  For those in Heaven, that love will never end, for God is eternal, and God is love.********  And so love is eternal and will never end.  For those of us in Heaven, when we are in eternity, we will be with God, and so we will be with love forever.  

So keep on loving now.  In the end, love will rule.  Love will reign in Heaven once we get there, just as it rules there now.  Love now, and keep on loving.  Step onto the bridge of love which Saint Catherine of Siena described, that boundless love of Jesus, which will take you on The Way into eternal love.  Step into eternal life now.  Live the life of love now you are meant to live forever.  

* 1 John 1:1-3 
** Matthew 18:21-22 
*** Luke 23:35-39
**** 1 Corinthians 1:18 
***** 2 Corinthians 4:18 
****** Romans 8:25
******* John 13:34 
******** 1 John 4:8; 1 John 4:16