In the last few verses of our reading St. Paul prays that their love may abound. This is a thematic prayer of St. Paul in his epistles. Our love needs to grow and be perfected. We need to love more, and love better. One of the perennial problems we face is sluggishness in spiritual zeal, pulling up short, atrophy, lolly gagging, coasting, half hearted effort, maybe not going in for that sin whole hog but dancing around the edges, playing with fire- snooze button faith- I told my class the other day whoever invented the snooze button was probably inspired by a demon.

Paul runs with vigor, fights with force, presses on towards the high calling. This is what he earnestly prays for when he prays that our love would abound. If you have been sitting on the sidelines, it’s time to get back in the race.

The Parable of the Wedding Feast is really about the uncompromising nature of God, which is just, good, and holy. And if we're going to enjoy the wedding feast with His Son, we must be clothed with goodness and holiness. Simply because darkness has no fellowship with light. Simply, because light destroys the darkness. This is not a moralism. This is just a metaphysical reality: light destroys darkness.

Would we have God become darkness, so that we might feel a little better about Him in this parable? Would that make Him kinder, gentler, more merciful? If He became a little bit dark? So that this poor old sap didn't get thrown into outer darkness? If He were to become part of the evil? Is this the kind of God we would imagine that would be more loving? Or do we cry out with the holy ones for justice, for God to destroy evil in the world, and in our hearts? To liberate us from the tyranny of sin and death, to set all things in order? To set all things rightly: that is what justice is.

Jesus' answer to the lawyer concerning which commandment was greatest does not devalue or dismiss the Law and Prophets. It actually sets them in the highest order. He says that the law and prophets are in fact all about Love. They have been sorely misunderstood and Jesus gives the key which unlocks their true meaning.

It is only through the lens of love that you will understand the Law and the Prophets, the Divine revelation in the Holy Scriptures. He is not depreciating the Scriptures by his statement but raising them to the highest order.

The context of our existence is time, and the very meaning of our life is revealed in the consecration of time- by making life liturgical. To fully arrive at the sabbath is to be perfected in God. That is the Sabbath over yonder, the Eternal Sabbath post Resurrection. But what is the Sabbath now, on this side?

The Sabbath now is a journey to being fully alive, and we pass through times, and seasons, and cycles of life, in which this journey must be consecrated to God continuously. There are many side ramps along the way which would distract us, so we need something to hold on to that will lead us home: and that is the liturgical life. A major part of us keeping the Sabbath is to prioritize the sacrifice of the Mass and a life of prayer.

We know that Jesus has overcome the power of death, he has restored life and given us a reason to live with hope. And yet he has not removed death from our experience, not yet. He has not removed the stimulus of grief and sorrow and pain in this present life- we still go through it. We still face disappointments and temptation to despair.

We can get angry and resentful and accuse God of all kinds of things, or we can trust in His goodness, and justice, and love, and know that while we still exist in a place where death and sorrow must be passed through, we know through godly hope that Jesus will have the last word, He will be there to say "stop weeping and arise".

There may be other ways of diagnosing or describing our problem, but I do think that this one thing that I'm going to share with you is the underlying catalyst for all of it, and that recognizing it in all its forms would be very helpful for us. The thing that I think lies at the root of all our trouble, is a feeling of insecurity. Some might appropriately call it fear, but I think "insecurity" is more helpful, it's more relatable, and descriptive to what we are feeling. From a scriptural and theological point of view, we can actually say that this feeling of insecurity lay at the bottom of the very first sin, and at the root of every other sin that follows. Our parents were tricked into taking the forbidden fruit by the deciever because he was playing on their natural state of vulnerability.

While all will be raised, not all will be made whole. This is where we come to the second story, "the story of the one grateful leper". This is where Luke zooms in and asks us who we are: are we the one grateful leper? Or are we one of the 9 who has ignored what God and Christ has done for us? Remember, when Luke writes this, he writes this for Christians. It's to remind us of our faith and to apply to our own lives. All were healed in the story but only one was made whole. All were healed in the story but only one was saved. Jesus has healed us all by the power of His Love, but the only one who was saved was the one who had faith.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear! Hear that as a command. It's not as if He is saying to us that some of you have ears and others don't, so I guess it's just too bad that you can't hear. To us today when He says "he who has ears", he means you. All of us who have received Christ- we have ears, so listen. Listen carefully to the Word of the Lord, as it comes to us in the still, small voice, as it comes to us from the Scriptures and as it comes to us through our brothers and sisters' mouths.