Living Goodness

God does not love us because we are good;

God's love makes us good (Source unknown).

We do not have to be good before God loves us; we do not have to try to be good before God forgives us; we do not have to repent before we are absolved by God.

It is all the other way around---if we are good, it is because God's love has made us so.

If we want to try to be good, it is because God is loving us.

If we want to be forgiven, it is because God has forgiven us.

God's love can do terrible things to us; it may make us kind and considerate and loving.

                                                                           ---Fr. Herbert McCabe, God, Christ, and Us

If we want to see living examples of McCabe's words, we need only look around us---or at the Gospels.  Matthew was a tax-collector, a sinner against the entire Jewish nation, his own people, but the love-glance of Jesus was all it took for him to abandon his table in the market-place and become a disciple, an apostle, a Gospel-writer.

Zacchaeus was a scoundrel and a cheat, but the love of Jesus for him made him give back four-fold all that he had taken unjustly.  Mary Magdalene saw the face of her Lord and wept profusely at her sins, wiping his feet with her hair.

How many of us were going our own way, determined to have our own way, until the love of God caught us and changed our minds and hearts?  How many people have tried to reform their lives without success until they were set free by the love of God given to us in Jesus Christ?

St. Martin of Tours, who died in 397, was an officer in the Roman army, serving in France, when he saw a shivering beggar dressed in rags.  Martin cut his warm cloak in half and gave half to the beggar.  That night, he had a dream---Jesus was wearing the other half of his cloak.

His encounter with the love of God in the poor convinced him that the way of love was the way of non-violence.  He asked for discharge from the army and was accused of cowardice.  He then volunteered to go into battle at the front of the line, unarmed.  Instead, he was imprisoned, but not executed.

Upon his release, he became a monk and eventually a bishop, during the time when it was thought that heretics should be tortured and executed.  His mission against violence continued in peace-making, intervening for heretics until he himself was accused of heresy. 

Those who have truly encountered the Risen Jesus in His Love will know from their hearts the words of Is. 58:6-7:

Is this not, rather, the fast that I choose:

releasing those bound unjustly,

untying the thongs of the yoke;

setting free the oppressed,

breaking off every yoke?

Is it not sharing your bread with the hungry,

bringing the afflicted and the homeless into your house;

clothing the naked when you see them,

and not turning your back on your own flesh?

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer,

you shall cry for help, and he will say: "Here I am!"