When I
was in college, our student apartments where heated by storage heaters. For
those who’ve never had the misfortune to live somewhere heated like this, let
me explain how they work. They’re electric heaters that only turn on overnight,
when the electricity’s cheaper. Inside them are bricks that absorb the heat and
slowly release it over the day. At night, it works great. You get great heat
throughout the morning too from the bricks. But, I remember some pretty chilly
early evenings, as we sat around the stove after dinner, waiting for the magic
time (9pm I think?) when the heaters would turn back on and warm both us, and
the now cold bricks.
We have
a habit in English (and many other languages do the same thing) about talking
about love in terms of heat. We have warm feelings towards someone maybe, or
our hearts are aflame. Our Catholic Christian tradition runs with that and, in
my favorite petition from the Sacred Heart litany, we refer to Jesus as the
fiery furnace of divine love. When a brick is warmed, it will warm other
things, at least for a while. And love is the same. To truly be loved, means
that we will love. God loves us into lovers. God loves us over-flowingly.
That’s
the dynamic behind the part of the Covenant Code that we heard as our first
reading. These laws are not abstract laws, they’re part of God’s entering into
relationship with His chosen people. And He says to them things like, “Don’t
oppress aliens,” and tells them why: “Because you were aliens in Egypt.” Not
just aliens, surely they remember, but slaves. And now, here they are, in the
wilderness, because God acted to free them. Remember. Remember how God’s love
was expressed for you. Be warmed. Be set on fire! And treat others warmly,
because that’s what people who are warm do. It’s not some kind of deal, as if
finite humanity could ever bargain on even terms with the God of Heaven and
Earth. It’s the dynamic of love. God’s love which, as passionate as it is, is
not just some feeling, but action, liberating action and acts to love us into
being lovers.
That’s
why when Jesus is asked what the most important parts of the Law are, he picks
two of the love commands. Love God, love neighbor. To live as part of God’s
chosen people is to live as a beloved person, to live as a warmed person, and
to do that is to warm, is to love. And love for us, whole-hearted and
whole-bodied, is not just a feeling either. But is active. And our love must be
active, because God’s loving action in our lives is active too.
Now, we
weren’t freed from slavery in Egypt. But God has acted to set us free from sin
and death. And today, God will act definitively to free [baby] from these things,
and claim her for love. But, we, like her, need to make sure that we don’t end
up like those 8 pm bricks, too far removed from God’s love to warm anyone.
Remember. That’s the key to the whole thing, to keep on remembering God’s loving
action. Simply to make prayers of thanksgiving (what do I need to say thank you
to God for today?) part of the end of every day can have an amazing power. To
take part in this ultimate re-membering of the Eucharist, when we, the members
of Christ’s body, come together, to do this in memory of him, and are fed by
him, body, blood, soul and divinity. And one of the most amazingly beautiful
circles in Christianity is that when we love neighbor, when that’s active, we
find that in the least of these, we are serving Christ, present in the poor
served. We love God by loving His image in one another. And by loving actively,
we are brought near to the source of all love, to have those flames re-kindled
in us anew.
And now,
as we prepare to wash [baby] of the stain of original sin and claim her for God’s
love, let us ask the saints and angels that not just would we pray for her,
that should live always in God’s love and show that to all she meet, but that
they pray too with us. The response is, “pray for us.”
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