Today we had a special memorial Mass at St. Patrick’s Basilica for all the deceased English-speaking priests of the Archdiocese of Montreal. Bishop Tony Mancini was the presider and preacher. The celebration was beautiful, and I am glad to have had the chance to gather together with my brother priests (it is always good to be with “the boys”) and to have prayed for and honoured the memory of our deceased brothers, particularly Dick Griffin, Ted Mooney, and Len Crowley (all of whom died in the past year).
Bishop Mancini decided to focus his remarks on the reading Romans 8: 31b-35, 37-39, which reads:
If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As he was speaking, I found myself meditating on the solidity of this love of God that is mentioned in the last line. But it also made me realise, this love is a two-way street.
“The love of God in Christ” can be interpreted two ways: the love from God to us, and the love for God from us. Think about it. If I say “I have a love of chocolate”, I don’t mean that chocolate loves me, but that I love chocolate. But if I say something like “The love of my friends sustains me” I mean the love they have for me.
St. Paul seems to be playing with both meanings in this passage. God loved us in Christ with a love that can never be broken, and in returning that love we also become conquerors. This passage is about perfect and total inner freedom in the face of any hardship or persecution. We truly become free when we are able to both give and receive love in its perfection. Perfect love demand perfect freedom, and vice versa.
I don’t know about you, but I want to live in that perfect inner freedom. It seems to me it would be a necessary component of perfect joy. In all honesty though, I know I am not there yet: how often I neglect to love Jesus, especially in his presence in the weak, poor, and abandoned. But I am comforted by one additional element of this passage: Jesus, who died for me, is indeed interceding for me even now.