(Please read this Scripture passage first, before the homily.)
For us, the seat or symbol of love is the heart; but we have few references to the heart as a symbol of love in the Sacred Scriptures. The Scriptures, however, have much to say about love.
I can speak about love, as an abstraction, for hours at a time. I do not have to take responsibility for love in the abstract. I do, however, have to take responsibility for loving, or not loving, in the concrete.
Since I have started blogging these homilies, I have seen the work of other bloggers. Gretchen Schmelzer is one such. In June of 2015, she wrote and printed a letter from a teenager to the teenager’s parent. She titled it something, “The Letter Your Teenager Can’t Write You”. It treated of the deep and mixed emotions of a teenager making a way to adulthood, hating the process, hating self, hating parents and everything, while at the same time loving self, loving parents and so forth. As the teenager feels self dangling from one end of a rope, the teenager is begging the parent to keep holding on the other end.
You parents have gone through this. I have not. As you held or are holding your end of the rope for your children, you show love in its most concrete form. As you love or have loved a growing teenager, you have held onto the rope and refused to let it go. This is love, concrete, real and hard love. This is not an abstract concept, but something real.
That rope tying you to the teenager is like God’s love for us. As we struggle to grow into the fullness of Christ, we dangle often from the rope and hope that God does not let loose of it. God so loved the world that he sent his only Son so that we could see God holding our rope so that we dangle without crashing to the bottom.
The blog has been read by many parents and teens [Reader: My source for the letter is “Parent’s Corner: The Letter Your Teenager Can’t Write You” by Gretchen Schmelzer on her blog June 23, 2015]. If you have experienced, or are experiencing, this you are showing the kind of love than God has for all of us.
This feast of the Sacred Heart celebrates God’s love for us with a modern symbol of the heart. As you parents keep holding on the safety rope for your children, you give a good homily on God’s love for us. As you do not give up, so God never gives up on us.
Your love for your children is a concrete love. Your love is a sacrament, a sign of how God loves each one of us. Thank you for make an abstract symbol a concrete manifestation of God’s love. Celebrate this feast.