“The poor you will always have with you.”  Jesus spoke these words in Matthew’s gospel as some of his disciples complained that the perfume a woman poured over the feet of Jesus was a waste of money.  The money could have been given to the poor.  In last Sunday’s gospel Jesus went into a synagogue and opened the scroll of the prophet Isaias and said this passage was fulfilled in him:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.”  It is through the life and presence of Jesus that are lives are full.  The emptiness and false promises for happiness in our culture are seen for what they are - experiences that wind up making us realize something is missing in our lives.  So often when we hear the word poverty we think of financial struggles and destitution.  The pictures and reports of the victims of the earthquake in Haiti remind us of how terrible and burdensome poverty is. To have no food, water, shelter or a hope for a job are horrible forces that drain life out of us not only physically, but also emotionally and psychologically.  How good of us to have compassion and share our resources with them as individuals in the collection and through our prayers, and as a nation with the help we have sent to them.  But as rich and affluent as we are as Americans we certainly struggle with poverty, especially moral poverty.  In the next few weeks I will speak with the eighth graders in our confirmation program about what we believe and live as Catholics in the area of sexual morality.  Our society constantly bombards us with messages that imply and even invite us to be sexually active.  Look at how we entertain ourselves - programs with the titles like desperate housewives, sitcoms where sexually activity outside of marriage is okay and the constant news about Tiger Woods and his problems can easily mislead our young people.  Everyday when I read the sports pages there are ads about correcting and increasing the ability of men to be involved in sexual activity.  Cialus, levitra and viagara are frequent ads in the sporting events on TV.  What undermines moral uprightness and the path to peace in our hearts is the lack of love in our world.  Everyday there are reports of violence.  There are people in physically and verbally abusive situations.  We have road rage.  Forgiveness is the last thing on our minds when we feel we have been treated unfairly, particularly by those outside our circle of family and friends.  Jesus says he has been anointed, chosen by God, to bring glad tidings to the poor.  In our poverty of spirit he is there with his unconditional love and life-giving mercy.  Is it naive to think we can do what Jesus did - love no matter what, forgive seventy times seven times?  We are the beneficiaries of his love and forgiveness.  Once they take root in our hearts, we see how these “glad tidings” make our lives fuller and richer than they would ever be otherwise.  It becomes so clear that this love and forgiveness is so needed in our world.

The second reading today comes from that part of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians where he speaks about love in very concrete and practical ways.  He begins by saying that no matter what we do, if we have any motive other than love, the love in Jesus, we are merely going through the motions.  Every once in a while I read this passage and put my name in where St. Paul has the word love.  With the paragraph below I invite you to do the same.

“Your name is patient, your name is kind. your name is not jealous, your name is not pompous, your name is not inflated, your name is not rude, your name does not seek his/her own interests, your name is not quick-tempered, your name does not brood over injuries, your name does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.  your name bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails....So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

Jesus and his love are the foundation of morality and the path to peace in our hearts and with each other.  To seek peace and the fullness of life anywhere else will always leave us feeling empty and knowing something is missing.  The good news of Jesus is no mystery.  We just make it a mystery when we don’t really believe it or live it.

Father Walden ; ;