Love Hurts

Thirty-Second Sunday of the Year. Fr David Goodill warns us that we miss out on love if we refuse to be vulnerable.

Anything worthwhile in life requires self-giving. When I was a student brother Fr Matthew (Matty) Rigney told me of the terror he experienced before preaching his first sermon. He went to Fr Ferdinand Valentine for advice and Ferdy told him that preaching is terrifying, because the preacher’s job is to tell his congregation that they must be crucified with Christ. When I reflect on this after twenty years of preaching it does not get any easier, but the alternative is leaving people to suffer without Christ.

To live is to love, and this not easy, because love hurts. A sentiment that launched a thousand songs is founded on the truth that love opens us to pain. Not all love is worth this, but the true love of friendship involves doing good with a self-giving that opens our hearts to suffering. The alternative is to close ourselves to the good, but in doing so we shut our souls to life.

Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead is a fictional letter written in 1956 by a Calvinist minister to his young son. Reverend John Ames has lived all his life in the same small Midwestern town in the US, with the exception of two years in seminary. As a young man he lost his wife and daughter in childbirth and retreated into a life of solitude until unexpectantly in his sixties he marries again and has a son. The book is a love letter to his son, expressing the joy he has found in life with this unexpected second family, but also his sorrow that as an old man with a heart condition his son will not grow up to know him. It is not that his life before this unexcepted love was completely lacking in love, but in the pain of loss he had closed much of his heart.

Gilead casts a light on life, love and suffering that transcends its parochial setting and Robinson plays with the interaction between the universal and the particular, the local and the global. John Ames has retreated into what is most familiar to protect himself from pain and suffering. Robinson introduces his older brother as the counterpoint to this seclusion. Edward Ames is a brilliant student who has spent several years studying in Germany. On his return his parents are shocked to find that he has rejected Christianity and refuses to say the grace before meals. If John Ames’s fault is to retreat into the familiar, his brother’s fault is to lose himself in fashionable ideas. This is also a retreat from love. Our deepest beliefs show where our love lies and reveal where we can be hurt. Adopting fashionable ideas gives us safety in numbers and sometimes when backed by modern ‘scientific’ scholarship it removes any personal vulnerability. The person who believes everything believes nothing, just as the person who is constantly falling in love loves no one in particular.

When Jesus observes the rich giving large sums into the temple treasury he is not impressed. Their wealth protects them from suffering, but is an obstacle to the self-giving love through which we grow. Wealth insulates the rich from the sufferings that come with poverty, but it can also prevent them entering into life and love; they retreat into seclusion or encounter the world in the superficial manner of global tourists. They keep God at a distance, for to allow God’s love into our lives is to open our lives to pain and suffering. Yet without God there is no life and we live a slow death, desperately clinging to what passes as love or sinking into the grave. The widow who gives her two last coins, her whole livelihood, is alive in a manner that the rich will never experience. She has nothing, yet she gives what she has to the poor; to other widows like herself. She understands that to live is to love and to love is to give yourself to others. Her life is not easy, but she is not alone in her suffering. The God of Israel, the God of the poor, is with her.

The Letter to the Hebrews proclaims that Christ has entered heaven through his blood on the cross. By his self-giving act of love on the cross Christ has brought healing to the world and opened the gates of heaven to all who turn to him and call upon his mercy. To call on Christ is to open our lives to love, and love brings pain; yet without Christ we suffer alone.

Readings: 1 Kings 17:10-16 | Hebrews 9:24-28 | Mark 12:38-44