When Albert Einstein was once asked if he could explain his theory of relativity in simple terms, he said “No, I cannot.” But he added, “If you come home with me, I will play it on the violin.” It sounds so simple, but the reality is some things are beyond simple explanations, but they can still be experienced. Albert Einstein was a religious man, and he believed the same was true of God. So much of God cannot be explained in simple terms but God can be, and is, experienced.
One of the ways in which that is true for us is if we think of love. If we try to explain love; how we fell in love or how we remain in love is truly a mystery. It cannot be explained in simple terms and yet that love can be truly experienced. Last weekend I gave an acronym for that love: Listen, Open, Valor and Empathy. This weekend’s liturgy celebrates that love in action from God through the Body and Blood of Christ.
Think of it like this – when a child is loved by a parent unconditionally, no matter what mistakes they make, they realize in their entire soul that they are loved. It changes everything when we know we are loved. It happens for a child to a parent and a parent to a child. When a parent is sick in their elder years and a daughter or a son comes and cares for them day and night, that love changes us. That love is experienced. We do not need explanations. We experience that and we are transformed by it. That is an eternal truth.
Ultimately that is the whole message of Jesus Christ: to allow God’s love into our hearts and genuinely experience it, to really feel it. Do not worry about the explanations, the doctrines; the dogmas just experience that God loves us unconditionally. When we experience love, almost everything else doesn’t matter anymore. That love is not just for me and you; it is for every single human being. It is not just Catholics, by the way. And it is not just Christians. It is for every single human being because that is what God said. He created every single one of us and he loved us from the beginning.
Doesn’t it make sense that if God wants us to experience the love that he puts into our hearts at the very beginning so that we can know and experience it? We call that a holy longing. We know the activity of that yearning is what we call the Holy Spirit. We have all these words to try and explain it but at the end of the day, our role is to experience this love; and to be transformed; not just know it but to be transformed like a person who is in love.
This weekend we celebrate the feast day of the Body and Blood of Christ, and it is all about that love—God so loved the world he gave us his Son and Jesus came into the world so that we would know in complete ways that he loves every one of us. He pours out His love, His blood for us. He breaks open His body for us, the Body of Christ.
When we receive the body of Christ, we become what we receive; we become the Body of Christ broken for others and we are called to live that reality in our greater community by loving others in the way that God first loved us.
This weekend, invite someone to join you as you come to celebrate the Eucharist. Help them rejuvenate their love for God through the community gathering as the Body of Christ. Let us experience the LOVE of God in the Mass. To connect last week’s homily with this week’s message. Maybe we can reach out to someone we love for 15 minutes each day and stay connected for the LOVE of God.
God Bless
Fr. Brendan