Learning to Love What’s Truly Good

This verse at the end of our reading from Romans expresses something that seems to be lost to many in our world today. In a culture where we are encouraged to focus on ourselves instead of God, our minds can become so misdirected that we can even become blinded to our sin.

Earlier in the same reading, St. Paul mentions some of the commandments that God asks us to keep. He said, “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet.” You would think that everyone would agree that these are things we shouldn’t do, that everyone would agree that these are very sinful things.

However, as we all know, the devil is the great deceiver, and he knows our weaknesses. He knows that when we get caught up in a Me, Myself, and I culture, we can convince ourselves (or others can convince us) to believe that even the greatest sin is justified, or even worse, virtuous and good.

We see it all the time. Just look at the school and church shootings that have taken place in our country. Upon investigation, most of the time we find that the people who commit these atrocities were convinced they were doing a good thing. A great example of this is the young man who killed Charlie Kirk.

A while back, I was talking to a young adult who was involved in something very sinful. I was encouraging them to step away from the sinful activity they were involved in, but during our conversation, I realized that they didn’t believe they were doing anything wrong. Deep down, I knew that they didn’t really believe this, but to justify their actions, they had convinced themselves that this thing that was harmful to them and was separating them both from God and their family was actually a good thing.

This person was a Christian, so I asked, “Have you prayed about this, asking God if this is His will for your life?” They replied, “Yes, I’ve prayed about it.” I said, “So what was God’s response?” They said, “God’s good with it.”

I said, “Okay, I’m going to tell you something that you should never forget. Anytime we are involved in something sinful, something against God’s will, and we ask God if He approves of it, and the response we receive is ‘I’m good with it,’ it’s not God responding—it’s the enemy.”

God is pure love. He will never tell us that something sinful is good, because it’s not loving someone to approve of their sin or encourage them to continue in it. We are His children. God loves us and wants us to be in Heaven with Him one day. It’s not in His nature to encourage anything that could put our eternal salvation at risk. God will never approve of or support us in anything that would harm us physically, mentally, or especially spiritually.

A couple of weeks ago, in a Sunday homily, Father Timothy mentioned a phrase that is very popular these days but is basically just a lie of the devil. The phrase is “Love is love.” The interesting thing about this phrase is that it’s never used to promote God’s love but is used to justify sinful actions based on our own personal opinions.

Love is not love—God is Love—and anytime we act outside of His love, we are sinning, and that’s just a fact.

In the Gospel today, Jesus addressed a great crowd of people saying, “If anyone comes to Me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”

But what does Jesus mean by this? Is Jesus really saying we have to hate our family and even our own life to be His disciple? Of course not. He’s not telling us to despise our family or our life. Jesus is telling us that He must be the most important person in our lives.

We must live the Catholic saying, “I Am Third,” meaning we should always place God first, others second, and ourselves third. He’s telling us that we must surrender ourselves to His love (body, mind, and soul) and live our lives in Him, with Him, and through Him.

Today, Jesus is also letting us know that being His disciple and living according to God’s will for our lives isn’t easy. We should be prepared. We should calculate the cost, fully aware that we won’t be exempt from experiencing hardship, persecution, suffering, and pain.

As Christians living in a fallen world, we already know that the earthly price of putting Jesus number one in our lives and living according to His will can be very high. But more importantly, we also know that the eternal rewards of having done so are, as they say, priceless!

Amen.