“Do you have to earn God’s love by doing the right thing?”
Bishop Timothy Senior posed this question to middle school and senior high students at York Catholic a day after they returned from Christmas break and embarked on the second half of their school year.
After pausing a moment to give them time to ponder the question posed in his homily during the celebration of Mass, he offered the answer: no.
“He wants you to do the right thing, yes, because that leads to happiness and fulfillment, but it’s important to know that anything we do is in response to Him first loving us just the way we are. That’s why Jesus was born. That’s why God became human – to take on our situation, to take on our limitations as a human person to be able to save us,” he said.
“He first loved us. We don’t earn it, we don’t deserve it. It’s not because of something we do or don’t do. He loves us,” the bishop stressed. “That can be kind of a hard thing to grasp because of our human limitations. Sometimes we put conditions on love: ‘I love people who love me, or only those who are nice to me. I love the people that I’m drawn to.’ But that’s not the way God is. God loves us all, without conditions.”
The bishop offered the message of God’s unconditional love during his visit to York Catholic Middle & High School on January 6, where he concelebrated Mass with Father Andrew St. Denis, school chaplain and parochial vicar at St. Joseph’s in York; Father Stephen Kelly, pastor of St. Patrick’s in York and Sacred Heart in Spring Grove; and Father Philip Burger, pastor of St. John the Baptist in New Freedom.
After the liturgy, the bishop engaged with students during classrooms visits, lunch and interactions with members of the Student Council. In Theology, Social Studies and English classes, he joined in classroom discussions about the Acts of the Apostoles; cultural, political and economic challenges in several countries; and types of poetry and literary works.
“God desires to give us all we need. Sometimes we might think that what we have been given is not enough,” he said in his homily, as he pointed to the Gospel story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes. “We might look at others and say, ‘He has more than I have,’ or ‘She has more talent, more intelligence than I have.’ That’s not the way God looks at us. God has blessed us all by giving each a share in His life. A few loaves and fish are going to be enough to do wonderful things.”
“It doesn’t take much to do something amazing if it’s done with love,” he said.
Learn more about York Catholic Middle & High School at www.yorkcatholic.org.
(Photos by Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness.)
By Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness
