“Love Is an Action, Not an Emotion”
Father Peter Fitzgibbons
November 4 – 5, 2023
Gospel: Matthew 23:1-12
In the Gospel last Sunday, the Pharisees asked our Lord, “What is the greatest Commandment?” Jesus answered, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Mark 12:30). The second greatest Commandment is, “You must love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:34-40). Our Lord knows that most people, when left to their own imaginations, will screw it up. So, in the Gospel, He tells us exactly what love is and how to manifest it. “If you love Me, take up your cross every day and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). “If you love Me keep My commandments” (John 14:15). By the way, there are many others.
Love is an action and not an emotion. It is an act of the will and not a feeling. Sometimes acts of love are very easy to do and enjoyable like giving your spouse a gift or making your children and grandchildren smile and laugh. Those are great gifts of love. But loving God can be difficult because He is not us. Often, I think I love myself more than God does. Some gifts of love are a little harder like taking up our daily crosses. Most people do not like their crosses. Do you think I enjoy walking around like a question mark? No. Do you think I enjoy eating fish twice a week? Heck no! Thank God for French dressing! Sometimes I do not like getting up in the morning. I’ve put a lot of mileage on this body, and getting up can be a very painful experience. But these are minor ways to love. Look at the Good Samaritan. He was on a trip when he came upon a man who had been beaten and robbed. The man was not lying on his side of the road so, legally, it was not his business, and he was not morally bound to help the man. But love is outside of oneself. So, even though it delayed his trip and traveling at night was very dangerous, the Good Samaritan went outside of himself to care for the man who had been beaten and robbed.
Sometimes we don’t like what God asks us to do. When someone is hurt or sick and needs our help, we think, “Nope. I’m not cut out for this.” That doesn’t matter. It’s not about you; it’s about that person. Acts of love may be very inconvenient. But we are called to not only show our love but also to grow in love. An act of love can be as small and mindless as eating fish. Some crosses are pretty easy like mine and others are much more difficult. Taking up our cross is not always pleasant to the senses. Changing diapers is not bad until the smell reaches you. That’s when you rise to a whole different occasion to love. This is what God calls us to do if we love Him. What do all these acts of love do? They take us away from ourselves.
When you work in medicine, you encounter things that are not pleasant, and the gag reflex kicks in. Sometimes acts of love can be rather repulsive. When a helicopter crashed, I showed Bubba, my staff assistant, how to bring patients in on gurneys just like on Mash. Bubba, who was on the verge of being sick, said, “Sir, [Bleurgh] what do you want me to do, Sir [Bleurgh]?” I said, “First, turn your head. Step outside, get some fresh air, and come back.” Bubba was doing acts of love while his organs were trying to leave his body in no particular order. The sounds and smells were traumatizing. Bubba was 19 years old and had never been exposed to anything like that. But he did what needed to be done, and that was an act of love. Bearing our crosses and those of other people including our family and friends is difficult, but they are crosses of love. People say, “I don’t feel comfortable doing that.” Ahh . . . I don’t care. I don’t like going to prisons even though they allow me to leave. As long as they don’t make me eat fish, I’m good. “I don’t feel comfortable with that.” Good! Our Lord never said anything about being comfortable. “I don’t get anything out of it.” Great! I’m not the world’s greatest spiritual director. I’m like to the right of Genghis Khan. “I don’t get anything out of it.” Don’t care. You aren’t supposed to. Spiritual direction is not about you. I don’t care how you feel. Not one bit. We are given the grace of comfort more often than we think, but not as much as we would like. It is not about us. Love is a gift to the other. When Jesus gives us these directions about how to love, it trains us to love like Him.
When you give gifts of love, you are dying to self so that you can feel what our good Lord felt. You are imitating what happened to our Lord on the Cross. People say, “But no one says thank you.” Many people in my priestly ministry don’t say thank you, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. Believe it or not, I have been cursed out, and not just by my family. In the Book of Acts, the apostles rejoiced because “they had been found worthy to suffer dishonor for the sake of the Name” (Acts 5:41). We get the strength to do that by prayer and through the Sacraments. When we fail in our acts of love, as we all do, we have the Sacrament of Penance to not only heal the wounds of our failures but also to heal the wounds that other people have inflicted upon us. This strengthens our resolve to pick up our cross and follow Him.
In the spiritual life, love is not an emotion; it’s an action. We have to love. In the various stages of life, love takes on different forms. Sometimes when people will soon meet their Maker, and I’m preparing them for their passing, I’ll say, “On this bed is your cross imitating Christ. You are at the right hand of Christ like the Good Thief.” So, offer your sufferings up. You have much to offer through all the suffering you endure although we suffer much less than our grandparents because we have much better medicine now. Still, when you are going through it, it seems like a lot. I had a man who just passed away from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He couldn’t breathe. When you can’t breathe, you tend to panic, so he was on a lot of antianxiety medicines. In that patient’s bed, you could see the suffering of Christ. By your suffering, you are imitating Christ’s sacrifice.
When I was a seminarian, I learned an important lesson. I was assigned to Saint John’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. As I was making rounds with a good Jesuit priest, all of a sudden, the door to a patient’s room opened. The smell was so, so bad. I went out into the stairwell retching while I tried to hold my stomach down where it should be. I did not go to medical school, but I knew my stomach should not be up in my throat. I told my father about it, and he said, “That’s good, son.” So basically, he didn’t care either. He was an Army medic before he became an officer. My father said, “You know, it’s not about you. You leave that room, get sick, and then go back in. It’s not about you.” That was one of the best spiritual directions I ever received. Just remember that there will be occasions when our gifts of love will make us feel bad. But there are two things we are learning: 1) It is not about us; and 2) When it’s really hard, when people are repulsive, abusive, and ungrateful, that’s when we grow in love. It is then that you have some conception, in a very minor way, of what Christ endured. His greatest act of love was on the Cross. What did His own chosen people do at the foot of the Cross? They jeered Him.
How will you apply this message to your life? _______________________________________
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