God's Facebook

Raising our love to the level of God’s love

06/19/2020

1 John 4:7-16 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit. Moreover, we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world. Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.

If you want to learn what people love – their passions and their priorities – just scroll through their Facebook posts. There you will discover pictures of cute babies and even cuter grandbabies, you’ll see sunsets and sandy beaches, pictures of moonlight and the perfect margarita, diatribes about donning masks and disgust about too much government control (so don’t wear masks), lectures about racism and lessons from the real world. And above all, you will find wildly popular pictures about people’s pets. Fr. Matt Garrison posts a picture of his dog Jonas and immediately gets 350 likes, while I post a homily and hardly get 50 likes. That is so unfair! Maybe I should post a homily together with a picture of his dog?

What I enjoy about these Facebook posts is they all give us a peek into people’s hearts. That is, they uncover a corner of what we care about, what we love. Of course, my posts reveal a little of my heart, too, that I share my homilies, and events at the parish, and at our Catholic schools: Immaculate Conception and Trinity Junior High. These are the things I love. It also reveals that I probably need to get a pet.

Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which always falls on the Friday after the second Sunday after Pentecost. Today’s feast is about the love of Jesus. If we want to discover what makes our Lord’s Sacred Heart skip a beat, we might ask what he would post on his Facebook page. What posts would pop up on God’s Facebook? Well, I don’t really know what he would personally post, but I think he would “like” all our posts. But there would be this decisive difference. His love for our passions and priorities would be perfect, whereas our loves are always imperfect.

What does that mean? C. S. Lewis explained the difference like this: “The Divine ‘goodness’ differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black, but as a perfect circle from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel” (The Problem of Pain, 30). In other words, all our loves plastered in posts on our Facebook pages are like a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel, whereas God’s love is the perfect circle of love. Indeed, the Holy Trinity can be imagined as a perfect circle of love among the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Hence, we read in 1 John 4:10: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he has loved us.” God’s love, therefore, is perfect; our loves are a work in progress.

My friends, on this Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus please ask yourself two questions. First, what does Jesus love? And second, what do I love? As well as the follow up question: what’s the difference? We can quickly find an answer to the second question of our own loves by checking the last ten posts on our Facebook page, where we publish for the whole world our passions and our priorities. And if we remember Lewis’ analogy that our posts are like a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel, we can start to surmise what Jesus might post on his Facebook page. That is, he would post the prefect circle of divine Love, purified and purged of our selfishness, our ego, our pride, our fears, our jealousies, our resentment, our hatred, our righteous anger, and so on. These things make our loves childish and our wheels wobbly, and that's the difference between his love and ours.

In a few moments we will receive Holy Communion and taste a little of that love that beats in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Ask him to purify your love so it becomes a little more like his, so your child’s circle is a little more well-rounded. And next time you post something on Facebook, remember: you’re not learning what other's "like" as much as sharing what you love.

Praised be Jesus Christ!