ON RETREAT WITH JESUS: 

HOW DO I LOVE HIM?

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “On Retreat With Jesus: How Do I Love Him?”

Today - July 22^nd - is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene.

Mary Magdalene is featured in today’s gospel - John 20: 1-2, 11-18.

We see her retreating into herself. She goes to the tomb that Easter Sunday morning. She experiences emptiness - an empty tomb - and then experiences someone she thought was the gardener. Then she - experiences and embraces Jesus.

The disciples are locked up in that upper room - filled with fear - and Mary is featured as going out and searching. Which of the two am I?

In spirituality there are those two movements: God in search of me and I in search of God. For me, Luke 15 - with its 3 parables - has always been the best example of those two movements. The Lost Coin and the Lost Sheep stories are God in search of us. The Story of the Prodigal Son is a story of God waiting for us. 

Abraham Joshua Heschel has those two books of his among many: Man’s Quest for God - 1954 and God in Search of Man - 1955 - that show these two movements.

Then there are those other possibilities - avoiding God at all costs or even running from God.

Then there is the great poem by Francis Thomson, The Hound of Heaven, in which he pictures himself running from God and God is running after him as a Hound.

DIRECTED RETREAT

Lots of people - especially women religious - are making retreats at this time of year. 

If you’ve ever made a directed retreat, a director would do well to give today’s gospel text from John to us. We’d spend 3 or 4 hours in silence reading, reflecting, reacting, to a text like this.

We’d break up the day of silence by walking and experiencing the grounds of a beautiful retreat house - by the ocean, a lake, or the woods - or the desert.

The hope would be that the retreatants would see themselves as Mary Magdalene in search of God.

I could picture the retreatant saying they can’t find Jesus. He is as if dead - buried - in a tomb.

I could picture the retreatant comparing herself or himself to Mary Magdalene and telling the director that - in a one to one session - which is a key part of a directed retreat.

I could picture the retreatant watching the director get up, go over to a CD player and playing the song, “I don’t know how to love him” from Jesus Christ Superstar.

I could picture the retreat director also handing the retreatant a poem, “How Do I Love You” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Sonnet 43 from Sonnets to the Portuguese and asking the retreatant to read it along with John 20: 1, 2, 11-18 again a few times - as well as remembering the song from Jesus Christ Superstar - "I Don’t Know How to Love Him" - and then to listen and be aware of what happens to the retreatant.

I can picture the retreatant realizing the thousand different ways she or he loves Jesus - not just an abstract Jesus - not a Jesus Christ Superstar - who is only a man in the musical -  but the Jesus in the Gospels, the Jesus in that person’s favorite of the four gospels. Then the Jesus of the Mass. Then the Jesus of the Mass extended in the meetings one has during the day - in neighbor, in seeing the birds of the air and the flowers of the fields as Jesus saw them - seeing a child and seeing the Kingdom of God in the way they see - all the times they experienced Jesus in the Cross - in the  stations of the cross on the walls of our churches and in the steps and experiences of our life - especially our falls, seeing Jesus when breaking bread with family and also in Eucharistic adoration, and on and on on. And like Mary Magdalene holding onto Jesus for dear life.

And then the person reports back to their director that they experienced Jesus pretty much like Mary did - and they cried out in prayer, “Jesus, Rabbi, Friend, Son of God” and Jesus embraced them.