Homily: Oct 20 2016 - St. Paul of the Cross - The most holy school of the cross

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing”. These words of Jesus always move us to examine our hearts. Am I burning with love for God? Am I burning with zeal for the spread of the Gospel? Do I have a burning love for service of my neighbor, for those in need?

Today’s Saint certainly burned with great love and great zeal. St. Paul of the Cross is the founder of the Passionist Congregation. The Passionists are known for wearing on their black religious habits the emblem of the Sacred Heart of Jesus which burns with love for God and for man.

Jesus himself was enflamed with love. Love is what motived the incarnation. Love is what drove him to the outskirts of humanity to embrace the leper, the prostitute, the sinner. Love is what impelled him throughout his Passion. His love is an inextinguishable furnace. When our own hearts had grown cold through sin and selfishness, it was his love that rekindled life in us.

How might our hearts become like Christ’s burning with love for God and our fellow man? St. Paul of the Cross, would no doubt say that we must meditate frequently on the Passion—on the Cross—of Christ. “It is very good and holy,” today’s saint said, “to consider the passion of our Lord and to meditate on it, for by this sacred path we reach union with God. In this most holy school we learn true wisdom…love is a unifying virtue which takes upon itself the torments of its beloved Lord. It is a fire reaching through to the inmost soul.”

Consider again the Sacred Heart of Christ, the Cross is plunged into his heart, like a key which opens a door. Meditating on the cross of Christ can be for us a key which opens up and transforms our hearts and will make them more like his, setting them on fire.

In the Cross we recognize what real love looks like. Love requires service, love requires daily sacrifice, love requires forgetting ourselves in order to give ourselves more fully to others.

In our moments of weakness and failure, it is easy to grow discouraged and to lose hope. That’s why in our sinfulness it is so important to meditate on how much we are loved by God. He didn’t die for the perfect, he died for us. He embraced us in our most unlovable state.

The love Christ showed on the cross is, as the first St. Paul—St. Paul of Tarsus—wrote in our first reading this morning, is a love which surpasses all knowledge, but is a love that fills us with the fullness of God.

May the Passion of Jesus Christ be ever in our hearts. May we meditate often on the cross of the Savior, and encounter “the breadth and length and height and depth” of God’s love for us, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.