The Gift of Love

By FATHER FRANK BASSETT

This past week we saw the love that Christians have for human life. In Washington, D.C., as in past years, people of faith got together to march against the 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court allowing abortion in this country.

These people were showing by their actions the words we hear from Jeremiah in Sunday's first reading:

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the nations I appointed you."

What more proof do we need as Christians that the unborn are human beings! As Paul tells the Corinthians, have these persons who allowed abortions lost love? To not have love is to be nothing, to paraphrase Paul's words.

In Sunday's Gospel Jesus goes to the synagogue and the people are amazed at what he reads from Isaiah and how he speaks about it. But soon their amazement turns against Jesus.

They lost their love when they heard that he came not only to them but to all Gentiles. How can this man do this? How can he even dare to speak of those others? We see when the people lost their love, they also lost Jesus. He just passes through their midst and goes away.

This is what we must remember in our lives. To open ourselves to Jesus and show our love for others. To show others what it is to be a child of God, a follower of Jesus. To show others our respect of life, our embracing of all peoples no matter what their beliefs.

In this way, we will be acting more like Jesus. Then we will grow closer to him and ensure that he will not walk away in our midst; that he will be right before us.

The greatest example of this occurs at Mass. We can open our hearts to him and receive his graces and his love that will be given to us by the Holy Spirit, those graces that we need to continue to walk as a child of God, a follower of Christ. Then we will never lose our gift of love, love of God and love of neighbor. A love that will one day bring us an invitation to the kingdom of God.

Father Bassett is parochial vicar at St. John the Baptist in Goshen.