Knowing, Loving, and Serving

The Baltimore Catechism is a text that served as the basic Catechetical work for the Catholic Church from 1885 until the late 1960’s. It was prepared by order of the Third Council of Baltimore, hence it’s name, and was based on a book by Robert Bellarmine that was written in 1614 called A Small Catechism. Revisions have been required through the years, not to change teaching but to address contemporary issues that did not face the culture of the Church in 1885! The text, written in a basic question and answer form, provided an easy layout for the memorization of the basic tenants of the faith.

One of the more popular from the book is also one of the basics, “Question 150,” which asks: why did God make you? The answer is central to our lives as people of faith: God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

This simple statement gives us much to ponder. God created us for the purpose of being happy with him forever in heaven, and we get there by knowing, loving, and serving him in this life. That is our entire purpose. My fellows in Alcoholics Anonymous and the other 12 Step Fellowships will recognize that for Catholics the purpose of life is seemingly no different than ours as people in recovery. Step 3 says that “we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.” Step 11 says that we spend our days now “praying only for knowledge of his will for us, and the power to carry it out.”

Alcoholics Anonymous articulates an important point: we turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him. It does not say “as we create him”…it says “as we understand him.”

As the Catechism states, our purpose is to know, love, and serve God. Think about it: we will not willingly serve a God who we do not love, and we will not love a God we do not know. We have to know him first, we have to understand him. We have to come to know that God loves us, and that all He does is motivated by this love for us. We have to come to understand that his love for us is a personal love. He doesn’t love us just because it’s his job and he has to. As Pope Francis reminds us, “God likes you.” He loves you so much that he actually likes you! What a profound and powerful thought! Once that has settled in our hearts, and we come to recognize and immerse ourselves sin the depths of his love, we are able to love him in return. Once we love him, we can serve him.

There is not a single one among us who knows, loves, or serves God perfectly. As A.A. says, “we claim spiritual progress, not perfection.” Yes indeed, we are hypocrites: if being a hypocrite means we speak and preach about loving God and yet are still sinful people. Personally, I don’t call it being a hypocrite, I call it being a human who is a work in progress. If it’s in fact being a hypocrite, then I am a proud hypocrite…who gladly is gathered together with other hypocrites in the pews of Churches, and in the halls of the fellowship, trying to become a better disciple. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it! We fall, but we have to get back up and keep going.

In this weekend’s Gospel Jesus speaks of going to Jerusalem where he will be arrested, suffer, and die. Peter responds by saying, “God forbid that such a thing should happen to you!” To which Jesus says:

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,

take up his cross, and follow me.

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world

and forfeit his life?” (Matthew 16:24-26)

What a great question!

What have we really gained if we acquire all the wealth, power, prestige, or fame in the world…and the cost is our eternal life – the life for which we were created? If we lose that, what have we truly gained? Nothing. If we lose our eternal life, we in fact lose everything.

Part of carrying our cross includes the hard and sometimes painful work of coming to know God, loving him, and ultimately serving him. This threefold task that is set before us is not always “a bed of roses” but in fact very often we find ourselves scratched and wounded by thorns. In the end however, it will all be worth it.

The experience of carrying our cross is going to include many falls, but after each one we must get up and press forward. Perhaps this is the message hidden behind the tradition that Jesus fell three times along the road while carrying his own cross. Of course, Jesus did not have “falls” like we do. Our falls are the result of our temporarily giving up, or sometimes our succumbing to temptation. Jesus on the other hand allows himself to fall not to say that we shouldn’t worry about falling, but rather to teach us an important lesson about getting back up after we do. Jesus serves the Father perfectly, because he loves the Father perfectly, because he knows the Father perfectly.

Serving God will always involve crosses, and we have to carry them with dignity and hope. We have to push ourselves back up when we fall and press on. We have to keep our eyes on our progress, not our lack of perfection. Above all, we have to remember that to continue to grow in our progress we must love him more deeply, which comes about by knowing him more intimately. We will not willingly serve a God who we do not love, and we will not love a God we do not know