Transmitting God’s Love to One Another

Transmitting God’s Love to One Another
11th Sunday Ordinary Time and Father’s Day, June 18, 2023
 
Helen Weber-McReynolds, RWCP
Gen 21: 7-21; Ps. 100; 2 Cor 1: 3-4; Mt 9: 35-38
 
          Imagine being an enslaved young woman with a little son, and being cast out into the desert alone with only enough food and water for a day, and for a totally unjust reason.
         Imagine being an early Christian evangelist, unable to return to visit dear friends and fellow Christians, due to the threat of religious persecution.
           Imagine being the apostles Jesus sent out to cure and heal the sick and raise the dead, and expected to count on the hospitality of strangers for your living, as happened in the chapter following the passage from Matthew we read today.
             Hagar, Ishmael, Paul, and the apostles no doubt felt lost, harassed, troubled, and abandoned, as did the people the apostles were sent to help.
              Now imagine being a transgender teenager in Indiana, unsure if you will be able the receive the medical treatment you need to live the life you know is right for you.
Imagine being an LGBTQIA person in one of the many states in the US that have passed laws restricting your rights strictly on the basis of your sexuality.
            Imagine experiencing a miscarriage and hemorrhage and being told by your doctor that it was against the laws of your state to give you the medicine needed to help you.
Imagine being a Southern Baptist woman pastor, and being told you could no longer minister to your congregation.
Imagine being a woman called to priesthood in the Catholic church.
             Lost, harassed, troubled.
            Our readings today tell us how God saved and protected Hagar and Ishmael, Paul, the apostles sent out by Jesus, and the people they cured and raised up. God saved them because of God’s love. But these people also went on to accomplish very important work in helping to establish justice and pass on God’s love on earth. Hagar helped Ishmael produce a great nation, by introducing him to his Egyptian wife. Paul spread the word of God’s extravagant love for all throughout the eastern Mediterranean region, helping many people understand their inherent worth in God’s eyes. And the apostles cured the sick, raised the dead, and told of the Good News of Jesus’ love.
As Sr. Mary McGlone pointed out in the National Catholic Reporter this week, when we bring God’s love to others, we experience it most intensely ourselves. We begin to understand what it is like to love as God loves. We only really understand God’s love when we give it to others. And that is really the sum of what God asks of us—to love God and to love one another. To love God BY loving one another.
            Fatherhood is certainly a vocation of loving God by loving others. Fathers are called every day to model God’s love to their children. Both the fathers and their children learn the depth of God’s love for us by experiencing the way fathers care, provide, teach, and protect.
            To be an apostle is to be one sent out by another. We are all apostles, then. Jesus sends us all as laborers into the field. There are so many who are terrified, harassed, and abandoned. Sometimes we feel that way ourselves. The only solution is to parent, shepherd, heal, and teach one another. God loves us infinitely. Let us transmit that love to one another, day by day, any way we can.