A reflection for the first Sunday of Advent, 2006

Bill McDonough, Theology department, College of St. Catherine

Our lives are a friendship with God; what could that mean, where might it lead us?

"Love is a friendship of the human being for God, founded on a fellowship of everlasting happiness given by God."

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

"Friendship is a relationship between those of equal rank, characterized by the free choice of each friend and the commitment by each to the good of the other"

Aristotle

1.We have "equal rank" with God by God’s gift to us: God’s love for us is a "superhighway"

from the English Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe

When a superhighway comes to a hill, it doesn’t really climb the hill. It slices right through. When it comes to a valley, it doesn’t go down to it. It strides across on stilts. It never turns any sharp corners. It goes on in a more or less straight line. And its surface is kept smooth, with no bumps on it to speak of. When they build superhighways they must say to themselves:

Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain (Isaiah 40.4) Think of how very different all this is from the old-fashioned kind of road, the winding lane. Now this old-fashioned sort of road is an image of the way we deal with each other, how we have to deal with each other.

God’s way is very much simpler than our ways. He doesn’t have our complications. God is just simply in love with us. Not just some of us, not just with saints or people who try to be good, but with absolutely everybody: with liars and murderers, with traitors and rapists, with the greedy, the arrogant, the inconsiderate, with presidents and priests and policemen.

The way of God’s love is more like a superhighway. It doesn’t care whether it meets terrain that is easy or difficult, uphill or downhill, good or bad. God’s love doesn’t care how important or unimportant we are. All those careful judgments we have to make, distinguishing friends from foes, working outjust the degree of intimacy that is desirable in particular cases; all that deciding who is goodhearted and kindly and candid, and who is mean and self-seeking — none of this counts with God’s love. He cuts straight through all the mountains and the valleys, the heights of sanctity and the depths of depravity. God does not turn aside from anyone. God’s way is smooth and easy and swift.

God does not respond to this world. He does not adjust his reaction to suit good people or bad. You do not have to be good before God will love you; you do not have to try to be good before God will forgive you; you do not have to repent before you will be absolved by God. It is the other way around. If you are good, it is because God’s love has already made you so; if you want to try to be good, that is because God is loving you; if you want to be forgiven, that is because God is forgiving you. You do not have to do anything, or pay anything, in exchange for God’s love. God does not demand anything of you. Nothing whatever.

Except one thing: you have to be ready to take a risk, become ready for all your security to crumble. You have to be prepared to let go of that faith in yourself that you have so lovingly built up, your faith in what belongs to you, your possessions of every kind. You have to be ready to be taken into the dark abyss of God’s love. You have to have faith in God’s love; for you face the dreadful danger of becoming good, of becoming yourself as loving as God is loving. And this is a frightening prospect.

Do you remember how Paul describes the catastrophic effects of love? God’s love and forgiveness may make us patient and kind, not jealous or boastful; it may prevent us ever from being arrogant, or rude, or insisting on our own way, or being irritable or resentful ... It may make us bear all things, believe all things, hope all things (1 Corinthians 13. 4-7). Well, you know what happens to people like that: they are taken advantage of, patronized, used and despised.