I Let Myself Be Seduced

Dear brothers and sisters, in the collect of today's Mass we ask God: "Sow in our hearts the love of your name."¹ It is a prayer we raise to God, asking precisely that our hearts may love the name of God. And this act on our part is a response to the love of God, who first communicated himself to us. Our response, however, is necessary if we are to draw those bonds with God closer. For his part, he is always near to us; but we too need to live out this nearness of his, a nearness that passes through our life, through the concrete reality of what we live.

The same prayer goes on: "and, drawing closer the bonds that unite us to you, make what is good grow in us and guard with loving care what you have given us." That is to say: when we draw our bonds with God closer, and so commit ourselves to this work of salvation that God accomplishes on our behalf, collaborating with his action, what is good grows in us. We are not good because we refrain from doing evil. True goodness, the very essence of goodness, consists in standing in the presence of God. If we draw our bonds with him closer, that goodness then grows in our hearts, precisely because the presence of God grows in our life. Which, put plainly, would be this: we open ourselves to the action of God, we make room for the word of God in our lives, we work according to the grace of God, and for that very reason the presence of God goes on growing in our lives. It is something incarnate. Here is the dynamic of the incarnation: the work of the incarnation grows in our lives, in such a way that we are then transformed by that divine presence, by the presence that sanctifies us and saves us. And so what God asks of us is also that we may, acting according to him, grow in the good itself, in what is good for us, and what is salvation in our lives.

There is something very striking in the fact that the prayer is a plea to God asking him to help us correspond to his love — because only in that correspondence does the love of God, which is dynamic and a source of life, bring forth the effects of life in the responding heart.

In the first reading, from the prophet Jeremiah, we hear: "You have seduced me, Lord."² It is the experience of God's love making itself manifest to us. God, in his greatness, enfolds us with his love, which seduces us and draws us to himself. Yet this God who draws us to himself, in this very work, makes the human heart desire him. The reading goes on: "and I let myself be seduced." That is, the heart which, contemplating the love of God, lets itself be carried by the work of God's love. To let oneself be seduced, then, is an act of correspondence to the love of God. God himself demands that response, and we collaborate with him when we let ourselves be seduced and hand ourselves over to his project, to his action, so that he may lead our steps in a very concrete way within our own history.

I recall here Pope Benedict XVI, in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est, which makes a reference to this love.³ God's love also bears the characteristics of eros — that is, the love which demands a response. God's love is oblative, it gives itself entirely, and yet it also demands this response of us. Here lies the mark of eros-love: to call forth the response. And so in our own lives too, living the experience of God's love and casting ourselves into this adventure of letting ourselves be led by him, we live that twofold reality as well.

The prophet said: "You were stronger than I, and you prevailed. All day long I am a laughing-stock; everyone mocks me."⁴ That is to say, he is walking in the perspective of that oblative love of self-giving; he lives the difficulties and yet remains firm in the mission, even with the anguish, with the bitterness of the opposition that stands against the word of God, to which he is faithful. He remains. And why does he remain? Because, even when he wishes to withdraw from the mission on account of so many difficulties, he still has the experience of not resisting the action of God. That is: he feels the difficulties in his life, he feels the pain in the mission, but he has not raised resistance against God. Since he remains with his heart open to God, he cannot stop, because he cannot detach himself from God. He wants to remain in that communion; he is aware of his own drama, of his difficulties, but the love of God is that space, like a platform, where his life takes place: with its pains, its joys, its sufferings, its persecutions. But God is there, as the one who is the foundation giving meaning to everything.

The refrain of today's psalm speaks of this most beautifully: "My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God."⁵ We are called to live this psalm as true prayer — that prayer of recognising who God is, of his love that reached us and seduced us, and of our own heart too, which let itself be seduced by that love and desires it more each day, and each day more wants to remain there with him. And at the same time, that remaining takes place within a dynamic. It is not an inert remaining: it is the remaining of one who is on a journey and each day desires more to draw near to that love, to take steps of approach. Which is to say: in the interior life the seduced heart grows in intimacy with God. There is a drawing closer of the bonds of love towards God.

In today's gospel, from Saint Matthew, we have Jesus showing in his own life and mission the pain, the human suffering that comes on account of the Word made flesh.⁶ That is: whatever and whoever stands against the word of God will not spare those who carry that word within them. Such people, then, will feel in their own flesh an opposition that is not directed at them, but at the word they carry. For that very reason, such a person will also face this reality: God seduced them, and they let themselves be seduced by God, and now they cannot say no to the mission, because they no longer want to be parted from God.

Jesus is the very incarnation of this work of God. It is in him that the will of God takes flesh, bears fruit and brings forth salvation. Christian living, then, becomes a kind of imitation of Christ — an imitation that is not reduced to something merely moral, but an imitation proper to those who received the grace of sanctification through baptism and who now, living that grace, desire ever more to be united to the one who is the source of all good and of eternal love.

Peter, not yet understanding this depth in the dynamic of God's relationship with humanity, and not yet understanding the full depth of the Master's own word, wants to rebuke Jesus with good intentions. He does not want Jesus to be put to death, does not want him to suffer; after all, he loves Jesus and therefore wants what is good for him. Yet Peter must come out of the mentality of those who only want to avoid pain and suffering, and enter into a new mentality — the properly evangelical one. Jesus says: "Get behind me, Satan!"⁷ A very strong sentence. But what is Jesus really saying? Peter's place is in the following of Jesus: it is not Jesus who must follow Peter, but Peter who must follow Jesus. Peter must still go deeper into the Gospel, come to know more of its depth, perceive its richness and its beauty — which is what can take from him all fear and all anguish and bring him to that drawing closer of the bonds with God, so that the recognition of God's presence may be stronger and may direct his life.

Jesus himself says: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? Or what can anyone give in exchange for his life?"⁸ The gift, the greater good, is life. This life we find in God. Jesus Christ, then, is this gift of life that God makes to humanity. The communication of the gift of life, so that everyone united to Christ may receive this vital nourishment, in such a way that, supplied and nourished by the grace of salvation, they may have true life.

The true life that Jesus brings us points beyond this existence as we know it. He announces his suffering, his passion, his death, and that he was to suffer greatly — but he is also the one who is to rise on the third day. This part Peter seems not to have grasped. Later, meditating on the gospels that narrate the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection, we understand well: he did not yet comprehend what rising from the dead meant.⁹ That understanding comes with the witness of Christ alive and risen. Peter has still to arrive at this knowledge of the risen one. And this is a witness for us too: we need to encounter Christ and bear witness to him as the risen one.

In the second reading, Paul exhorts us to live our life as a living sacrifice;¹⁰ not as one who seeks out suffering, but as self-surrender to God, as surrender to his love. The heart that has been seduced and that let itself be seduced by God now offers itself entirely to him, even while aware of the difficulties, of the sufferings, of the situations of opposition it meets. Spiritual worship, then, is precisely that deep worship in which praise, thanksgiving and sacrifice are offered from a heart immersed in love; reached by this love and filled by it, it can make of itself an offering. It is the heart that does not live turned in on itself, nor towards securing the goods it possesses, but the heart that discovers that the true good lies in the encounter beyond itself, and for that very reason casts itself outward, in this giving without measure — because it knows that the one who receives it has the capacity to surpass our own gift and, at the same time, welcomes it and raises it up, so that perfection may be in our lives. It is not, then, a moral perfection on our part in the first place, but the perfection of God's work, of his presence that raises us up, in such a way that our moral action can then learn from this work that God himself accomplishes in us.

For this very reason Paul, in his exhortation, says: "Do not conform yourselves to this world."¹¹ That is, the world must not be the form that shapes us. He goes on: "But be transformed by the renewal of your way of thinking and judging." That is, the one who shapes us must be God himself. We are in the world, we are set within the world, and yet at the same time we have an eternal vocation. We are called to be shaped from the experience of the one who is eternal. And the one who is eternal transforms our life, our love, our way of seeing, so that we may distinguish, in our life, what is good from what is not. Better said: so that we may discern the will of God in our life — what pleases him, what is good and, at the same time, what sanctifies us and gives us true peace.

To live, then, the Sunday Eucharist not merely as the keeping of a precept, but as a plunging of body and soul into the mystery of Christ himself, alive and risen, who makes himself manifest there — this is a vital necessity for the nourishment of Christian life. The Eucharist exists because he rose from the dead. The one who gives himself in the Eucharist is the very same who rose from the dead. It is not merely an element reminding us who Christ was, but someone: his living and life-giving presence.¹²

If today, then, we wish to be Christians, we must take up his presence. That is: if we wish to be Christians, we must follow in the steps of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is in following him that our life finds its true meaning. And it is in that following that we come to understand how deep, how beautiful and at the same time how strong and effective is the love of God — which brings forth in our lives a meaning that surpasses pain itself, and brings forth in our life that life which no one can tear away. That is: they can take the life of someone who stands in such friendship with Christ, in the sense of ending their existence; but that life which is begotten by God is not taken away — it comes to shine all the more. And so this person who, living a martyrdom, lives their communion with God to the last consequences is precisely the one who made the experience of placing themselves in the discipleship of Jesus, passed through death and, for that very reason, can then await with confidence the resurrection of the dead.

After all, the one who gives us the gift of true life gives us a gift that is not lost in this existence through being subject to it, that does not meet its end in our end, in the end of our existence, but that carries the seed of eternal life. And for that very reason this seed can grow even now, bring forth its first fruits, and will bring forth also those last fruits — that is, the life that stands above all death, the life that conquers death and, for that very reason, the life that remains for ever. God alone has the power to sustain us unto eternity and to make us live eternity as communion, and not as separation.

May we then, moved by the light of today's liturgy of the word, cleave more closely to Christ, so that in him we may make and constantly renew our experience of God. An experience that is not simply private, not that inward-turned experience of God which closes a person in on themselves, but the personal experience, an experience of incarnation. An experience that touches our whole existence, touches our interior life, and yet also translates into works that can be seen on the outside. It is a complete work: it does not simply make us feel good, it makes us live the true good; it makes the good really grow in our life. A good that is not reduced to feeling; a good that, even when our feeling is not on its side, remains the same — just as the prophet who, when he thought of giving up, of falling silent, could not resist the presence of God. Because, even when his sensations gave no help to the living out of his mission, in his faith he perceived: God was still there, and was the good that sustained him and nourished him; and so it was there that he was to remain.

May we then, in Christ, bind ourselves ever more to God. May we stand in that relationship with him in such a way that we desire that drawing closer of relations ever more, so that in this effort of ours, in this commitment and orientation of life, the very work of God may grow in our lives, and he may then sanctify us and save us, each one of us.

Praised be Our Lord Jesus Christ! Now and for ever!

✳

Notes

Readings for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Psalm 62(63):2.3-4.5-6.8-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27.

• 1. Collect of the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Roman Missal). The whole homily rests on this prayer.
• 2. Jeremiah 20:7, the opening of the first reading: "You have seduced me, Lord, and I let myself be seduced."
• 3. Benedict XVI, encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est (25 December 2005), nn. 9-10: God's love for man is eros and, at the same time and wholly, agape — love that draws and love that gives itself, without the one standing against the other.
• 4. Jeremiah 20:7b-8a, continuing the first reading. The "I cannot resist" at the end of the reading is in 20:9.
• 5. Psalm 62(63):2 — refrain of the responsorial psalm: "My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God."
• 6. Matthew 16:21-27, the Gospel of the day: the first announcement of the passion, the rebuke to Peter and the conditions of discipleship.
• 7. Matthew 16:23: "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, because you are thinking not as God thinks but as human beings do."
• 8. Matthew 16:26, still in the Gospel of the day.
• 9. Mark 9:10: after the second announcement of the passion, the disciples discussed among themselves "what rising from the dead could mean"; cf. John 20:9.
• 10. Romans 12:1, the second reading: to offer one's body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God — this is spiritual worship.
• 11. Romans 12:2, continuing the second reading: not to conform to this world, but to be transformed by the renewal of one's way of thinking and judging, so as to discern the will of God.
• 12. The liturgy calls that "today" a memorial: not the recollection of an absent event, but the presence of the very mystery being celebrated. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 1085 and 1362-1366.

Text revised for publication. The revision corrected agreement, government, punctuation and repetitions, without altering the content of the preaching. The notes were added in this edition and were not part of the text as preached: they indicate the passages cited or alluded to in the homily and the readings proper to the day.