We are our brother's keeper!!!

Today’s scripture readings have an underlying message that we may at first miss. The message is this, “we really are our brother’s keeper”. Cain’s infamous answer to our Lord’s question in the Book of Genesis comes to mind here, “Cain where is your brother?” And Cain’s reply, “Am I, my brother’s keeper?” Remember, Cain had killed his brother, Abel, out of jealously. Let’s use this story to look at our commitment to one another more closely.

Abel, for his part, had worshiped the Lord with full, active, and conscious participation, that is with full heart, mind, soul and strength. Abel’s offering of his earthly treasure really reflected the reality of his inner offering. In other words, Abel really offered himself, humbly and completely, to the Lord in loving thanksgiving for all that the Lord had given to him (which was everything). And the Lord for His part accepted Abel’s true act of worship and love, done for love of God and by the way love of neighbor.

Cain, on the other hand, merely fulfilled the prescription of the Law, but his heart and mind was not in it. He merely showed up for Sunday Mass, if you will, in order to fulfill an external observation of the law but he did not offer himself in love to his Creator who loved him so much.

As a result, Cain’s offering was rejected because it wasn’t done in love; that is, it didn’t reflect the offering of himself—love always gives the gift of self to the one loved. And so, Cain refused to truly love God and worship God fully, and as result he refused to truly love his neighbor, which in this case was his brother, Abel.

Cain’s refusal to love God with his whole heart, soul and mind actually led to him to despise his brother Abel, who did, so much so that Cain killed Abel. This story shows us the connection between the love and proper worship of God and love of neighbor, especially love of neighbor within our Christian Community. We are to worship God not only as individuals but also together as community. Our act of adoration with Jesus while being our most intimate and personal act is at the same time also our most communal act. It is the most important act we do as a community together because we worship our God as a community. In fact, our individual worship is bound to the act of worship of our entire community.

We must love God above all and then we must love our brother and sister and care for them, to love them more than self in order to show our love for God; this is the perfection of love. If we do not care for our brother as our other self, then we, in a sense, perpetuate the rotten fruit of Cain’s selfishness and murdering act of his brother. And so, are we our brother’s keeper? Our Blessed Lord’s answer to Cain and to us today is a definitive and thunderous YES!

Our Lord in our readings points out our binding personal responsibility to our brothers and sisters, if we are to love Him and worship Him fully and properly. We are bound to one another by Charity, St. Paul reminded the early Roman Church in today’s second reading. This clearly means that we do have a responsibility toward the Christian community and to those individuals who make it up. This is an aspect of our faith that many Christians today, I think, don’t realize. It can never be just about “me and Jesus.” We live our faithfulness and our relationship to Jesus within a community, again I like family better; we live our relationship with Jesus within a family of believers or we don’t live it at all.

No one of us can say I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love outside a family of faith. Just as a child without a family to raise him never reaches maturity and in fact, becomes developmentally and mentally stunted, so too the believer who tries to believe without the family of faith becomes spiritually disabled, never able to reach that maturity that is God’s call for each individual in Christ Jesus. This all brings up something that I have spoken about many times. That is our need and our great responsibility to the parish family as our family of faith.

It is not true Christian living when we do not make our relationship with our parish family and integral part of our relationship with Christ. In fact, we cannot have a true authentic relationship with Christ without an active, actual and full participation in the entire life of the parish family. Not to do so would be spiritually immaturity; it would render our soul incapable of ever coming to the mature love God calls us to. Just as we receive love and learn to love in our individual families so to, and in an even more deeper way, we receive love and learn to love in our parish family; you just can’t have one without the other if you are to love as God commands, that is as He has loved us with His own love alive with in our hearts, minds and souls.

As a parish family we are indeed one another’s keepers; we have a grave responsibility to one another; a responsibility of perfect love and charity. Our eternal salvation, and I am not exaggeration here one bit, our eternal salvation depends, absolutely on whether or not we are faithful to this responsibility. The parish is more than just the place where one shows up to grab the morsel and then runs; in fact, the first person to do that was named Judas. This is not being bound together in love, in Charity.

Our parish is the family in which we have a responsibility to actively partake in the life of this family by our presence, our commitment, and by our fidelity and faithfulness to the parish and to its individuals. Love begins in the family, and is perfected in the “Family of families,” the parish family. Our individual lives and our individual family lives should then revolve around the parish family’s life, not the other way around, for it is from her that we receive the graces we need to become holy and thus to live lives of authentic Christian witness to others in order to live and help others live in the freedom and joy of children of God. We cannot make it without the parish family; we need it and we need one another in order to be happy in this life and in the life to come.

All of this teaches us that the Parish family life can never be placed on the periphery of our own lives; that is, off to the side. And so, it is a sign of Christian immaturity, an immaturity of love, when members of a parish family do not get to know one another; yes, first by worshiping God with one another every Sunday at Holy Mass, but also by getting to know one other while partaking in parish events and activities.

It’s a sign of Christian immaturity when we don’t correct one another in love, support one another, help one another and yes, forgive one another.

It’s a sign of Christian immaturity when we don’t pray for one another, fast for one another and even offer our sufferings and our whole selves for one another.

And it is a sign of Christian and spiritual immaturity, an immortality of love, when members of the parish family do not support one another by sharing generously and sacrificially their time, talent and treasure to the parish family. It is not at all authentic faith and witness when we fail in stewardship; our very relationship with Jesus depends on our faithful stewardship. Sadly, there are many members of the family that don’t give a dime to the support of the family and don’t share their time and talent in any way. This is not being our brother and sister keeper.

And I have to add this; it is a sign of Christian immaturity when there is not fidelity to the parish family, when one runs off somewhere else because it is too difficult here or because they like an easier message somewhere else or because they don’t like someone here or because they don’t get their own way. Again we need each other’s full presence here, as we adore God together, helping one another to offer ourselves lovingly to the Lord.

Let us then be bound together by love, by charity; let us truly be one another’s keeper, concerned for one another’s well being, especially for one another’s spiritual well being and eternal salvation. Often I think about how difficult it is to have lost for a lifetime, someone I loved. But then I think how much more difficult, and unbelievable difficult to know what it is to lose a soul for all of eternity. And so I pray, as should you, that your or I never be a cause, in word or in deed of any soul turning away from God or not drawing near to God. And even more so, I pray that your and I would be able to lay down my life for the sake of my brothers and sisters, that is for you my dear parish family and all those souls who are depending on us for their eternal salvation.

We truly are responsible for the salvation of one another’s soul; we are our brother’s keeper; this cannot be a responsibility we take lightly. Our parish family must truly be a Family of families helping one another get to heaven and depending on one another to get to heaven!

At this holy Mass let us pray for the grace to love one another as God loved us by loving and adoring Him, offering ourselves totally as a sacrifice of love to our Father in union with Jesus’ sacrifice on this altar by the power of the Holy Spirit for the love of God and for the love and salvation of our brother and sister’s in our parish family, the family of St. Patrick’s…a family of love. Our Lady, Mother of our Parish family, pray for us sinners who have recourse to thee. Amen.