Comments on Benedict's Lenten sermon

Thanks Paul for the link to Benedict XVI's sermon  for Lent 2012 and your thoughts and questions about the topic of love-in-communion.  Here’s what I liked from it.

Being brothers and sisters in humanity and, in many cases, also in the faith, should help us to recognize in others a true alter ego, infinitely loved by the Lord. If we cultivate this way of seeing others as our brothers and sisters, solidarity, justice, mercy and compassion will naturally well up in our hearts.

 I had to go look up “alter ego” and this is what the dictionary said: "Another side of oneself; a second self. An intimate friend or a constant companion." I like to think of treating people as a long-lost brother or sister that I am just getting the chance to meet and now be in relationship with. Here’s another Benedict quote:

What hinders this humane and loving gaze towards our brothers and sisters? Often it is the possession of material riches and a sense of sufficiency, but it can also be the tendency to put our own interests and problems above all else.   

Yep. We think and talk about ourselves way too much. Then Benedict sums up with Romans 12:10—“ Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor” (ESV). Treat everyone as a sibling (one you like!) and appreciate them. Donald Burt, a Villanova professor who has written much on Augustine, says this in a book of his that I am just starting:

Though the reality of friendship with all will occur only in heaven when we will be able to see the fullness of the presence of God in ourselves and every other human, the desire for it and the effort to extend it as far as possible can begin here. We will not meet every human in a lifetime, but we can strive to make every human we meet a friend. We can avoid rejecting out of hand anyone who offers to be our friend. At very least we can deem them worthy of our friendship and try to bring them to a point where mutual, truthful, frank, and trusting friendship is possible. We must love all humans, some because they are friends, others in order that they might become friends. Indeed, Augustine goes so far as to claim that when an enemy is loved in this fashion, fellowship has already begun. We love them as friends not because they are our friends just now; rather it is because that is what we hope they someday shall be.

All of this just rephrases the sentences from the C. S. Lewis sermon, “The Weight of Glory,” our rector quoted at the end of his sermon on Sunday. I hadn't actually read it before yesterday, but loved it! (pdf here) Here's the sentences he quoted:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat....Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

So to you Paul and any other holy possible gods and goddesses reading this, I pray that we will have a love-filled Lenten season--reaching out, listening to others, and receiving many in friendship.