(by request, my homily from Sunday)

How many homilies have you heard about God’s love and about loving God?

Personally, I have no idea. I lost count years ago.

You and I have been hearing about God’s love and loving God since forever. But there’s something we don’t hear much about. How do you do it?

How do you love God?

When you hear that question, maybe the first thing that comes to mind is that list. You know, the one that Jesus gives, when He answers the question about which is the greatest commandment.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” You know, that one.

It’s a good list. But it’s not the whole story. There’s something missing from it.

What I mean is, Our Lord is absolutely right. All of that is true. But there’s something that has to happen first.

Before we can do any of that, we have to know God.

As St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, “we cannot love what we do not know.”

The moment you say that out loud, “we cannot love what we do not know,” the truth that it points to is readily apparent. Even obvious.

If you understand what love really is – I’m not talking about infatuation or lust. If you understand what love really is – then you know that it doesn’t just happen.

Love is a deliberate choice, an act of the will to love someone.

Think about it. Every parent of a two-year old or a teenager is living this choice. Everyone who is taking care of a spouse, child, or parent with a chronic health problem or a potentially terminal illness is living this choice.

But it’s not just marriage and family. And it’s not just the hard stuff.

Everyone who has an old friend is living this choice. Every healthy relationship you and I have is, on some level, a version of living out this choice. Whether we’re conscious of it or not.

And in all of those instances, that choice to love? It’s only possible because you know that person.

Why would it be any different with God?

This, by the way, is the “why” behind the importance of education – in all of its forms – in our Catholic faith. It’s how we know God.

Whether it’s the Scriptures we read for every Mass or it’s preaching. Whether it’s Father Clint’s YouTube channel, “Just the Word,” or it’s my blog, “Moments Before Mass.” Whether it’s Catholic Standard Time on Sunday mornings or it’s our beloved St. Aloysius School.

Knowing God. Knowing God well enough to truly love God. That is what’s behind it all.

All of us are loved by God. Knowing God well enough to truly love God may sound like we’re creating the rest of a closed loop. God loves us. We love God. End of story.

In practice, it’s anything but a closed loop.

Because God’s love cannot be contained. It will spill over into every area of our lives. And it will spill over from our lives. It will move us to make a difference in the lives of others.

This is why Catholic education is not a replacement for the corporal works of mercy. Catholic education, in all of its forms, is not in competition with things like Deacon Mick’s street ministry, or any of the other ways that God’s love spills over from our lives into the lives of others.

Rather, God uses Catholic education, in all of its forms, as the wellspring for other ministries. Because Catholic education gives us the knowledge of God that we need to truly love God, it is the very soil from which the corporal works of mercy grow.

This plays out in different ways, in different people’s lives. I’d like to tell you about the one I know best.

As many of you know, I’m a convert. I grew up in a very Protestant environment. Influenced by a church that used a cardboard cut-out version of the Catholic Church – one full of stereotypes about Catholics, what they did, what they believed, how the Catholic Church had corrupted the Christian faith – as the reason for everything they did.

It was almost like, whatever the Catholic Church does, we’re not doing it. If someone had told them the Catholic Church had indoor plumbing, they probably would have torn the bathroom out.

And then? I went to Catholic school. Not because we were Catholic. Not because anybody in my family believed any of that Catholic stuff. But because my parents wanted me to have the best education they could give me. And that was a Catholic education.

That’s where I found out that Catholics didn’t have horns or tails. That’s where I found out what Catholics were really like. How they lived their faith.

That’s where my evangelization started. That’s where I began to know God well enough to love Him. That’s where my ministry, where all of this, begins for me.

I am a Catholic, I am a deacon, because countless people just like you were and are committed to stewardship, to building God’s kingdom on the foundation of Catholic education.

I am a Catholic, I am a deacon, because countless people just like you actually live their commitment to stewardship.

Year after year, in good times and bad, living their commitment to stewardship. Their commitment to ensuring that – if they have anything so say about it – there will be Catholic education this year. And the next.

For that, I am eternally grateful.

Do I know what our next ministry will be? The next way that this parish will bring Christ to a wounded world? No.

Do I know who will be the next vocation? The next religious sister, the next friar, the next deacon, the next priest? No.

But I know it will happen.

I know where all of it will come from.

And all of it will come to be, because you lived your commitment.