Love God; Love What God Loves
Thoughts on the First Readings -Joe Frankenfield
Palm Sunday
When we hear what God is speaking to us, our lives change. When we actually come to realize that God is constantly creating us with a love beyond comprehension and that he creates everything that exists with the same love, we experience a unity with all creation deeper than any divisions we may encounter. As Christians knew from the first, there’s no loving God without loving what God loves.
From the beginning of our Tradition the saints, philosophers and theologians of our faith have taught that there’s no separating God from God’s loving. God is what God does. And God’s loving extends to everything God creates.
There are moments when we like – and we need – to step back from the activity of tending God’s creation to simply praise God verbally and emotionally. We have to catch our breath and enjoy a moment of song, a comfortable prayer. We refresh our souls and restore our wills. We recollect God’s promise, our priorities and what we’re all doing together.
Our verbal praise is only part of the story, however; and not the most important part at that. We can easily convince ourselves that our relationship with God consists in giving him something that he wants. We can forget that God doesn’t want anything for himself. He’s giving us existence and promising to fulfill it through the action of his Spirit in us.
In the end, praise of God, our response to God, isn’t what we say. It’s who we are. It’s being who we are in union with the rest of creation. In short, our praise of God is caring for what God cares for.