Stretch your love, then, beyond your spouses and childrenthat love is found also in beasts and sparrows. You know all about sparrows and swallows, how they love their mates, how they hatch their eggs together, how they feed their chicks, all with a kind of natural goodness, with no thought of reward. The swallow doesnt say, "Ill feed my children so that theyll take care of me when Im old." No such thoughts: she loves and feeds them unselfishly, showing a parents affection, not requiring reward. And I know that you, too, love your children in this way. "Children ought not lay up for their parents, but parents for their children" (2 Cor 12:14). Thats also how many of you excuse your greed: youre acquiring things, and saving them, for your children. But stretch that love, let it grow. Loving your children and spouses is not yet that wedding garment. Have faith Godward. First love God. Stretch your love Godward, and carry as many as you can Godward. Theres an enemy? Carry him Godward. Its a child, a wife, a servant? Carry them Godward. A stranger? Carry him Godward. An enemy? Carry him Godward. Carry him on, carry the enemy: if hes carried Godward, he wont be an enemy any more.May your love advance so far, may your love be nourished so much, that it is brought to perfection, and thus may you don your wedding garment, thus by your progress may the image of God, for which we have been created, be re-engraved. That image has been sullied by your sin, worn away. How? By being rubbed against the earth. How so? When it is rubbed by earthly desires. For "although a man walks in the image, vainly is he disturbed" (Ps 38:7). Truth is sought in an image, not vanity. For it is by loving the truth that that image, for which we were created, is re-engraved, and his coin is returned to our Caesar. Thats what you heard when the Lord replied to those Jews who were testing him: "Hypocrites," he said, "why do you test me? Show me the census coin, that is, the image engraved and the inscription. Show me what you pay, what you get ready, what is demanded of you." They showed him a denarius, and he asked him whose was the image and inscription. "Caesars," they replied (Mt 22:18-21). That Caesar was also looking for his image. Caesar did not want to lose what he had ordered made, and God does not want to lose what he made. ... Christs coin is the human being. There is Christs image, there Christs name, there Christs gifts, and Christs duties. (Augustine, Sermon 90, 10; PL 38, 566)

Rev. Joseph A. Komonchak, professor emeritus of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, is a retired priest of the Archdiocese of New York.

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