FALLING IN LOVE WITH GOD

Parents dress their children for Baptism in a wedding gown.  And when they arrive at the Church, they are asked if they really, really understand that they are enrolling their little one in the School of Love.  Godparents are asked if, instead of vanishing from sight after the service, they are ready, willing and able to support the parents in their role as 'first and best teachers' in the School of Love. Quite often, parents and godparents are surprised that this is what they are signing up for.  And even more surprised when they hear that their understanding of Love, and what they teach about Love, needs to be shaped, over time, by Jesus, and not by the world (who only love those who love them and who only give for what they can get back) or by the sentimentality that makes good movies.
Today's Gospel teaches all of us who are in the School of Love, that 'hearing' is a beginning, but 'just hearing' is a fatal end. Hearing must be followed by understanding and understanding followed by action.

Is our Church a two tier community made up of those who take this seriously and those whose eyes glaze over at the suggestion that they shoulda. If it is, Matthew 7, 24 - 27 has something serious to say about that.

And yet, this invitation to Fall in Love with God invites us to have respect for Time.  Some are drawn when they are children, some in their youth, some in middle and some in old age.  Some come on the tidal wave of failure, some on the elevator of success. Some, when there is now an empty place at the table where someone they loved once sat.

It is too easy to say that all will find their wedding garment in time, but it is easier still to say they some will not.  In the Gospel, all are invited: good and bad.  But good and bad are not what defines them.  I sometimes wonder if, once inside the Love we have fallen into, we may find that God has chosen, with great love, the wedding gown we will wear when we marry Him.  Yet Matthew is clear that it is better to arrive in the fully grown Robe of our Baptism, and having made it easier,  by the witness of our kindness, our holiness, our faithfulness and our integrity, for others to come to the Wedding Feast.