Somebody (*raises hand sheepishly*) forgot to prepare the Propers for St. Michael and All Angels. Sorry.
RIGHT-CLICK HERE to save the audio file.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and from our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
There are many persons and things that we love; and there are
many persons or things that love us. In the final analysis, however, everything
we have, everything we hope for, everything we desire traces back to one of two
loves. When you come right down to it, there are only two things that we love,
and we must choose between them: God, or the things of this world. These two
loves come from opposite sources, and they produce eternally opposite results. Whoever
loves the world will have nothing after he passes away. But whoever loves God
will have eternal life with the angels and saints and faithful departed.
Whoever loves this world cannot have God as his chief love. But whoever truly
and earnestly and faithfully loves God will have both God and the world.
That alone convinces very few. The pull of this world is so
strong. Our passions are set to desire earthly things. Our minds are prone to
see and think about and desire only the here and now. We are so wrapped in the
fear that we'll miss out and won't get ours. Somehow we find it hard to believe
that the world can let us down, even though we know it often does. We find it
hard to believe that our love for the things of this life—things like the
praise of others, the pride of accomplishment, and the lust for power or sex or
money or good feelings—is worthless. And so, instead of loving the things that last,
we love the things that, in the end, will not help us one whit. We love the
world so much—too much, in fact. Yet, in our misguided longing and yearning, we
are blinded to the fact that the things of this world really do not love us.
While we have many loves, there is in the end only one true
Lover—the Father who gives us His Spirit so that we might live safe and secure
within Christ, the Beloved One. To love the One who truly loves us—the One who
loves us with an undying, unfading, ever-deepening love—to love Him must be our
chief desire, so much so that we are willing to throw everything else away,
even to break ties with those who drag us away from Him in His holy Church. To
love Him above all things means to prefer nothing and no one other than His
embrace. To love Him means to fear only one thing—losing Him. And to love Him
above all things means to trust that He loves us so much that He has sacrificed
all that He has and all that He is so that we may never be harmed.
To love this Lord God with all that we are and all that we
have does not harm us. We are told that it will. We are told that the sacrifice
is too great, that we will lose out on too much, that life will be hard. But to
love the only One who truly loves us cannot hurt us. In the love of God there
is no excess. But in the love of this world, and this world's goods and this
world's pride—in that love, all is hurtful because all is deceptive. The world
says that if you love the things of this world, those things will love you
back. But all the things of this world will fade; they will never be able to make
good on their promise.
The one true God has already kept His promise of love. From
the very first sin He promised a Savior to crush the head of the serpent. Our
Father sent His Son, and His Son has loved us to death on the cross. Our Father
has made us His children in the waters of Holy Baptism. He does provide what we
need for this body and life. But even more than that, our Lord speaks His Word
of forgiveness to us; Jesus feeds us with His own body and blood. These rich
blessings will never rust or fade, and no one can take them away from you. In the
name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all
understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always. Amen.
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