Some of the shifts of the 60’s and 70’s were healthy. Technology advanced. We became more oriented toward human experience. The behavioral sciences, psychology and sociology, significantly broadened and deepened. But also in the 60’s and 70’s, some potentially dangerous trends began to emerge. Baby boomers, and their children, baby busters, grew up in a period of relativism, subjectivism, and anti-institutionalism that has led to questionable approaches to relationships, human sexuality, questions of human life, and ethics in general.

In the gospels, Jesus is frequently portrayed as being at odds with organized religion, with the religious institutions of his culture, especially the practices of the Scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus calls people to a reality that seems to transcend religion. He calls them to the Kingdom of God, God’s Reign. When people of the 60’s and 70’s hear Jesus in conflict with organized religion, I think it often appeases our anti-institutional tendencies and appetites. Those of us who grew up in the 60’s can be anti- "anything organized." But I think we need to beware of interpreting Jesus’ view of the Kingdom of God, for Jesus’ view of the Kingdom of God is far from being laissez-faire, laid back, or lacking in convictions or imperatives. In chapter 22 of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus paints a picture of the Reign of God as a wedding banquet to which everyone is invited. The invitation to the way of life that Jesus calls "The Kingdom" is a universal call, a universal invitation. No one religion has an inside track to God’s Reign. But in the same passage, someone invited to the banquet is thrown out of the banquet, excluded from God’s Reign, for not wearing a wedding garment. Now, at first hearing or reading this seems quite harsh and unfair on the part of the King, who is God, who invites any and all to the banquet. But the message that Jesus seems to be making is this: while God might not be too interested in human-made regulations and restrictions of organized religion, and while all are invited to this greater reality of God’s Reign—God’s Reign does have specific standards and values that those attending the banquet or members of the Kingdom must adhere to.

I think love is one of those realities that became blurred and confused during the 60’s and 70’s, and some of the confusion extends to our own day. For some people, love is sexual experiences. Others confuse love with manipulation and control of others. Others call various expressions of power over others love. The kind of love that Jesus calls people to is on a continuum, extending from love toward our primary relationships, to love of, and concern for, enemies, strangers, and the victims of social injustice. Can you see this kind of loving is quite different from sexual conquests, controlling others, power over others.

What might that love look like among and between people we consider to be our primary relationships? I mention some of the following characteristics of love, and I’d like to openly confess that I often fail in many of them.

I think love is presence. Presence is much more than physically being around. It is an emotional discipline; being with and attending to another person. It is positively paying attention to another person. Presence is subtle; it requires effort. You know, often we exit from each other in our relationships. We can exit through work, hobbies, sports, TV, reading. We can even use involvement at Church to exit a relationship. Is there anyone that you are exiting? Is there anyone that you’re not being present to? Why? What is going on in that relationship?

Love is communication. Communication is much more than passing on information to someone —though that is part of it. Love is sharing thoughts and feelings, one’s interior world with another person. You know, often I experience people at the end of their relationships, angrily criticizing each other for not communicating. Often in these situations, responsibility for not communicating lies on both ends of the relationship. To communicate we must develop skills in reading, hearing another person’s inner world. But a person must develop also a congruency with one’s own inner world to communicate that to another. How and where are we with these dual skills of really hearing another, and also sharing ourselves with another?

Love is a decision. More than the 60’s /70’s emphasis on feelings, true love is a commitment. We love when we feel like it and when we don’t feel like it. Love is truly hard work. True love must rest on the solid foundation of decision or commitment, for our feelings shift.

And I believe love is encouragement and support. In love, we let another person know what is good, what’s beautiful, what’s wonderful about him or her. We help reveal to the person how they have been gifted by God.

But in some circumstances, love is challenge. It takes work to stand against a person that we love, sometimes, calling that person to alternate ways of seeing or doing life. Sometimes we need to engage in tough love.

Love. Love is self sacrifice. I believe love is being willing to hang on a cross for someone else, to lay down one’s life, as Jesus speaks of it in John 15.

But we need to watch it. Self sacrifice can become unhealthy if we do not practice another dimension of love; that is, healthy self-care, self-love, self-esteem. You know, often the most requested seminars or talks that I give center around the management of stress and anxiety. People tell me they know how to work, they know how to make money, but they don’t know how to positively care for themselves. A survivor of cancer told me recently, "Since my battle with cancer, I deliberately try to care for my mind and my body." We all need to do that. We all need to do that, not waiting for disease or catastrophe to strike.

Love of self and love of others becomes more possible, I believe, if those efforts are grounded in a profound, pervasive conviction, a conviction that an ultimate someone, God, loves us first and loves us unconditionally. We are freed to love self and others when we live with the assurance, as Paul spoke of it, that God is working all things for our benefit.

And, I believe love is forever. The decision or commitment of love is eternal. If we experience love as terminating, as not being forever, I believe it’s because people really did not know each other, and there was perhaps a pathology, an immaturity, an incapacity there that was not known about. Or sometimes relationships fall victim to the culture of narcissism around us. In such situations a person has served his or her usefulness to another person and that person moves on to another utilitarian relationship.

Love is presence, communication, a decision, encouragement, challenge, self sacrifice, self esteem, grounded in divine love. Love is forever. And, as I said earlier, love is on a continuum, extending from our primary relationships to unconditional positive regard for enemies, for strangers, and for those who suffer from social injustice.

Love God, others, and yourself. Jesus teaches in Matthew 22 that these commandments summarize, synthesize all religious law and all religious tradition. Jesus was not being original in highlighting these three poles of love. Deuteronomy 6:5 had called the Old Testament Jews to love God above all. Leviticus 19:18 had called them to love neighbor as much as the self. Jesus’ unique contribution and revelation is that he connects these three touchstones of love, seemingly making them equal to each other, and interconnected. In Jesus’ perspective, we cannot do one of these touchstones well without simultaneously doing the others. Also, love of God seems to be experienced through love of self and love of neighbor.

I think one of the dimensions of love that cries out for our attention and effort is unity among ourselves as Christians. Joseph Cardinal Bernardin called Catholics to such unity in his Common Ground project, which still is calling Catholics beyond bashing each other with our political ideology or expression of Faith, to greater listening to and respect for each other, as we seek the common ground that truly unites us—which is Faith. Faith is a life-giving relationship with the living God. Faith is a shared core story, held by members of a community. Faith is a shared memory, held in community. Faith is a shared vision with a consciousness that it is an alternative to the dominant culture’s vision around us. Faith is a holistic, integral way of life.

When the apostles want to dismiss the Canaanite woman seeking healing for her daughter in Matthew 15, because she is different from them in convictions and lifestyle, Jesus stops for the woman and grants her request. With this "foreigner", if you will, Jesus intuits there is common ground. There’s faith. "Woman, great is your faith", Jesus says. Not just Catholics, all Christians, and all people of faith, need to seek common ground—unity with each other. Why, the scriptures seem to suggest that unity is the very dream of God for us. Communion seems to be God’s intention for us in the creation account. Communion, unity is the dream preached by Jesus in his teachings on the Kingdom. What does it profit any of us to practice a mean-spirited, judgmental, elitist religion that is empty of love, mercy, compassion, and understanding? Spirituality is shallow and our successes are hollow if we do not practice love and unity with our fellow human beings.

Finally, I again turn to Cardinal Bernardin for wisdom regarding a last dimension of Kingdom living: care for the society and the world around us. Looking again at Matthew 22: Jesus teaches us to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s—give to the emperor what’s the emperor’s—and give to God what is God’s. This kingdom teaching of Jesus must not be misconstrued as calling us to a separation of spirituality and our interaction with society. In an address at Georgetown, Cardinal Bernardin highlighted three ways in which Christians and other believers positively influence society. We who believe offer vision to society and engage society in dialogue about vision for life. For example, the Catholic Church’s emphasis on the consistent ethic of life. Secondly, we bring service and ministry to the world around us through our educational, health, and outreach services; and we do this without checking out peoples’ religious affiliations. And, thirdly, those who live the values of their faith, for example, the values of the Kingdom of God, we ought to be good citizens who enrich the society that we live in.

The faith, hope and love of the Reign of God can’t be isolated from daily life or political life. They bubble over. They bubble over and interact with society. As Stephen Carter maintains in The Culture of Disbelief, the founders of this country were not trying to separate religion from influencing daily life. Spirituality and religion of necessity do influence how we interact with the world. No, the founders wanted to protect religion from being meddled with by outside influences like government. This is what they meant when they talked about the separation of Church and State. In a recent "U.S. News and World Report," Richard Freeman of Harvard University and others speak of the "faith factor" as perhaps holding the key to healing the social ills of America and to improve the quality of citizenship in America.

So, to sum up, God’s Reign: everyone is invited. But the standards are difficult to live by. They include the disciplines of love with people close to us, love of all people as brothers and sisters, a discipline of unity and communion, and a care for and responsibility toward the society and the world around us. Indeed, all are invited to the banquet, but we need to "put on" that garment of love, mercy, unity and justice that God demands for the banquet.

Lydia Talbot: Fr. Brennan, how was that ethic of love you talk about first revealed to you?

Patrick Brennan: I think, as for most people, through my family, through my interactions, especially with my parents. My parents—my dad is deceased; my mom is still living, thank God—were very self-sacrificial, simple people, and I saw them hanging on the cross for their kids and for each other over and over again.

Talbot: You used that image: love is being willing to hang on the cross for someone else. You also use the word congruency. That’s a tough thing to find in one’s life, isn’t it?

Brennan: It’s very hard for us in this stress-filled society.

Talbot:  How do you do it?

Brennan: By praying and I need quiet time everyday. And, you know, I’m an old introvert. I find if I do not give a block of time for myself to get congruent with myself, what’s really going on with me, it’s then that I have anxiety problems and stress problems and things like that.

Talbot:  Thanks for that message. That encourages us to think more about that kind of balance. Thanks so much, Patrick Brennan. Wonderful to have you here!