My dear parishioners, you’ve heard it said, I’ll never love again, My hope is gone, or I don’t need faith. Though such thoughts suggest awful experiences of some sort, you don’t hear forlorn people claiming that faith, hope and love or similar “goods” of character are in themselves worthless. To clarify, the person who says I’ll never love again -- whatever that may mean -- does not attack love as an idea or as an ideal. To the contrary, he is expressing his own personal inadequacy and unhappy history in matters of love.
Love, hope, faith, courage, justice, and wisdom are virtues. There are others. People who consciously prize virtues often speak of their ardent desire to live up to them. Opinions about love, to illustrate this virtue again, may differ radically from one person to another, provoking much debate. Yet ideas likelove’s existence, its necessity, and the importance of striving for love’sperfection are universally understood and approved in all human societies. This being so, virtues reveal themselves as moral traits that, when taken to heart, perfect individual character. Do good, avoid evil, Never do evil in the name of any good and so forth.
We may not converse easily on the subject of virtue these days, but we recognize how they orient us to ideals we ought to strive for, to habits of life people ought to cultivate for their mutual benefit. Hence, principled men and women invoke virtue to praise a person’s courageous deeds as well as to denounce a scoundrel’s exploitation of innocent people. At the end of the day, virtues exist to inspire thoughtful people to seek and find the origin of everything that is good. As theologians will tell you, God is the origin of all that is good. Along the way, philosophers add, one is obliged to become that which he or she truly desires to attain. Both philosopher and theologian concur that life is better when citizens of nations are schooled in virtues not market puffery or political propaganda.
Believing on the one hand that human beings are birthed into opportunity -- “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” etc. (Declaration of Independence) -- we esteem people who strive to attain the good and true as these are universally appreciated. Such esteem is based in no small part on common agreement that flawed humanity must strive for perfection. To the point, talking about perfection is meaningless if otherwise thoughtful people deny the obvious: all human beings are simultaneously birthed into inadequacy, failure and suffering in this world. Disobedience to God, mutual aggression and self-corruption and worse come to mind. We Christians call these things sin and what is more, we know wickedness to be deeply embedded in human nature.
What follows is inescapable. Human beings are radically in need of redemption by someone we recognize 1) to be human like ourselves, 2) absolutely pure and innocent, and 3) who is himself perfect love, and 4) willing to defend fair love to the death, laying down his life to rescue us from every trace of evil. We Christians know this someone to be fully human and fully divine, the Son of God and Son of Mary, born in Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, and who grew to manhood “in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.” [Lk 2:52] School your spirit in what is good and true and serene -- things possessing value both on earth and in heaven -- and it will thrive. Remember, the Holy Spirit of Truth will teach you. “Do not fear, only believe,” says Jesus. [Mk 5:36] Sincerely in the hearts of Jesus and Mary. Your pastor, Reverend Richard Barker.
My dear parishioners, you’ve heard it said, I’ll never love again, My hope is gone, or I don’t need faith. Though such thoughts suggest awful experiences of some sort, you don’t hear forlorn people claiming that faith, hope and love or similar “goods” of character are in themselves worthless. To clarify, the person who says I’ll never love again -- whatever that may mean -- does not attack love as an idea or as an ideal. To the contrary, he is expressing his own personal inadequacy and unhappy history in matters of love.