Totally

I love ice cream. As a child, I always wanted one of those soft-serve machines that I saw at the local co-ops and town halls near our dairy farm in Minnesota. They never ran out: an infinite flow of frozen goodness! It was the jar of the widow of Zarephath’s to my childish mind. (1 Kings 17) But one day, every child must learn that you can’t keep dishing out goodness without replenishing it. Sooner or later the well runs dry, that is, most wells.

I tire of giving. I give, and if I don’t get the return I expect, I’m frustrated, and I wear out. Man’s deepest yearning is to love and be loved, and many give up loving because they don’t get the love they demand in return. We are wired to get returns, to justice, but justice on our own terms. We naively expect that what we give will be returned in kind.

God is just, but his justice is not our justice: I am a sinner, infinitely in debt to God, and God has forgiven my entire debt and loved me without measure. True justice is the fact that I will never be owed more than I owe Him as that steward in the Gospel (Mt 18:23). True justice is that he has given himself totally to me FIRST. He has filled me totally. True justice is that without cost I have received; without cost I must give (Mt 10:8).

As a religious I have the priceless gift of Mass every day. In Mass, Christ gives himself totally to me. I walk out of Mass a burning, beaming monstrance of Christ, having witnessed his supreme sacrifice of love, having witnessed Heaven on earth. I am totally full! The tables are turned on my conundrum of loving and being loved. It isn’t me giving myself “gratuitously” to others and expecting a just return of love. How blind! The buck is passed to me; the return is my duty, not my due. I have been totally filled with his love. He has poured himself out totally to me in Mass, and now I am called to pour him in me out totally to others, “that God may be all in all! (1 Corinthians 15:28).”