So that Gospel is about the power of God's love to change our lives and the power we have to show love to each other and help each other to grow and change. Reflecting back on my Catholic childhood, I don't know if we ever had many Gospels like that which were all about God's love. We certainly had very few sermons on that theme. Seems like most of the sermons were about a God who was quite distant, and rather cold and judgmental, and always adding up our faults and failures. And then along came the Second Vatican Council and things began to change rapidly.

And I remember around that time (This was back in my drinking days!) when I was in a bar in Dublin. Not this Dublin, the other one. And this gentleman sat down beside me, and after he had had a few drinks he became quite religious. You may notice that with Irish people, give them a Guinness or two, and devotion strikes.

And he began to share with me his religious philosophy. He said, "I never liked it when we got all that hellfire and damnation, and the punishing God and the mortal sins that seemed to grow on trees. But," he said, "now I think we have gone to the other extreme, because now all we hear about is the love of God. And I think we've gone too far." And, well, he didn't know I was a Jesuit. So he said then, "And you know the worst of them all are the Jesuits." He said, "All you ever hear from them is the love of God, the love of God, the love of God. .... You know those Jesuits, they sicken you with the love of God."

Well, of course, I disagree strongly. And I'm very glad that along the way I had wonderful teachers who conveyed to me the immense power of the love of God to change my life, to change our lives. And one of those great teachers was Fr. Tony de Mello. He was an Indian Jesuit who unfortunately died well before his time. I was fortunate enough to get two retreats from him, and they were really life-changing experiences. He was a famous mystic, writer, storyteller. And I would say he was easily the most riveting speaker I've ever heard in my whole life. And his whole thing was he communicated by telling stories. Always stories. That should remind of you somebody else, shouldn't it? Patty, who would it remind you of? Anybody? Jesus. Yes, Jesus communicated through parables. At one of the other masses somebody said it reminded them of Fr. Dibble. And one of the stories that Fr. de Mello told, I've never used in a homily before, but I've often thought about it. And I think it casts light on today's Gospel, on the power of love to change us. He used to spend his summers lecturing around the world.

Then in the rest of the year he ran an eight- or nine-month course in India, and people came from all over the world to imbibe his wisdom: priests, religious, sisters, lay people. He used to give lectures and then he used to have group meetings.

He told me that one year there was this particular priest and right from the beginning of the course he was picking at this sister. Always picking at her, criticizing her, telling her she wasn't growing, telling her she wasn't benefiting from the course, telling her she wasn't changing. And sometimes he was quite cruel and he reduced her to tears. So one day the rest of the class got together and they confronted him, and they said, "We don't want to hear any more of this. We're tired of your criticism of this sister. Just because you don't like her is no reason to be so hard on her, and we've gotten tired of it." And he said, "Oh, you have got me completely wrong. It's not that I don't like her. I like her better than anybody else in the class. I think she's wonderful. I think she's a beautiful person. And that's why I always want her to be better." And this woman sitting there possibly had never heard those words about her in her life before, that she was somebody so likable, so lovable, so wonderful. And Fr. de Mello said that, from that moment on, she began to change dramatically, and by the end of the course she had become a radiant, fulfilled human being. Where criticism and carping hadn't worked, love prevailed and love changed her.

Now, I believe this very same thing applies to the love of God. If we stay at the level of thinking of God as a fault-finder, as a judge, maybe it will keep us from serious sin, but it won't get us far up the mountain. If we really want to climb that mountain of faith, we need to open ourselves up to the love that God has for each one of us, we need to realize that we are deeply cherished, we need to let that enter into our bloodstream so that it changes us and we become the people that God wants us to be.

To grow in grace, to grow in faith, you need to open yourself to the love that God offers. When you do, you can change in ways that will surprise even yourself, because God's love has the power to change us.

Finally, Jesus went on to say, "So you should also love one another. This is how I will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." That means that each one of us, we have the power, by loving each other, to help each other to grow and to change. And I certainly experienced that in my life.

And I'll finish by telling you this story. I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, not untypical, but very loving; however, the love was all implicit. It was extremely rare for anyone to say, "I love you," because we felt, well, they know we love them. What's the point to telling them? And there wasn't much physical affection, either. So I came for the first time to California in 1974. I was studying in Berkeley. I was helping in a parish in Pleasanton, St. Augustine's, which at that time was probably the mecca in Northern California for several great new movements in the Catholic Church: The Charismatic Renewal, Cursillo, Marriage Encounter. And so after every mass I would go out of the church and I would be engulfed by all these people, men, women and children, wanting to hug me and tell me how wonderful I was and how marvelous I was. And at first I suppose I backed off a little bit, but I really got to like it. And I will say that, during the years that I was helping at that parish, I changed considerably, I got a lot more self-confidence and a lot more self-trust. And now when I go back to Ireland I always tell my relatives I love them. I always hug them. They were taken aback, but they're getting used to it. And sometimes I see them exchanging meaningful glances with each other which kind of say, "He's from California, you know."

So the lesson of today's Gospel: The love of God has tremendous power to change our lives if we just let it in. And we have tremendous power to help each other to grow or to change by showing love to each other. If you give away love, you lose nothing; but if you receive and accept love, you gain a great treasure.

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