Knowing God means knowing your own limitations

Sermon for the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Deuteronomy 6:2-6 Hebrews 7:23-28 Mark 12:28b-34

Boundaries are a curious thing. We talk about them as if they were absolute. But we can recognize the border only because we have some sense that there is another side. We don’t talk about the world or the universe as connected. No, recognizing the border means already looking beyond it.

That’s the gist of this excerpt from Anna Michael’s mesmerizing and rather mystical novel. held (2024). Science must draw lines, define objects and categories. However, human life cannot be limited by systems and restrictions. Certainly not the qualities that make us unique people. You can talk about rational boundaries, but when you do that, you’re not talking about human life.

When we are touched, Paavo thought, when we feel something beyond us, it is the boundary, the limit of the body that allows us to recognize it. The limit is proof of the beyond. Not “I”, but what lies beyond “I”. He wouldn’t be surprised if physics ever made sense of it; but only because science seeks to prove that it does not exist. Scientists will tear us to shreds in search of him, but where they look for him they will not find him. He remembered an anecdote about a man who had lost something and was looking for it on the other side of the street under a street lamp. Why are you looking for him there? Because the light is better.

Now he thought that perhaps this was not a joke after all. Don’t look for where you lost it, you will never find it there. Look where the light is.

We need to perceive, he thought, in accordance with the scale on which matter insists. There is a body and everything that is not a body, but at the greatest magnification we are one system; How else could sound waves destroy us, free us, bind us?

It is equally difficult to generalize the Gospel, to reveal its boundaries. That’s how it should be. The gospel is a proclamation. It calls us to a new way of life, as Jesus himself lived. It is even more difficult to translate the Gospel into a set of commandments. How to legislate a way of life?

Nevertheless, when our Lord was asked to sum up his new way of life, he did so, and therefore we are obliged to pay special attention to his answer. When the scribe asks about the commandments,

Jesus answered: “The first thing is this:
Listen, O Israel!
The Lord our God is one Lord!
Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all my heart,
with all my mind,
and with all my might.
The second is:
Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than this” (Mark 12:29-31).

Jesus speaks of loving one’s neighbor as the great commandment. To live like him is to open your heart and your arms to others, to honor them as the vessels from which flows the only life you will ever know.

We are talking about individuals. We define ourselves as such, but there has never been a moment when “I” existed without “you.” The truth is that completion for each of us lies in the other. Isn’t that the essence of the Genesis story? Adam can name, classify, set boundaries between one animal and another, but he cannot achieve completion without Eve, she who is already part of him, his path to completion.

All our interactions with other people are divided into two streams: we ignore or we acknowledge. If we start by ignoring others, we will end up offending them, but acknowledging others means respecting their humanity.

However, love for one’s neighbor is the second commandment. Jesus imagines this to be based on an even more fundamental aspect—the love of God.

To talk about God means again to talk about boundaries. Because whoever God is, God is not us. God is beyond boundaries. Indeed, the very concept of God is a recognition of our own limitations. We are not all there is. How sad life would be if we were like that!

No, something – someone! — lies beyond us. If an unbeliever were to reproach us for our confidence in what we do not see, how would we respond except to admit that we are irritated by the connectedness of human life? We rightly feel that life is limitless and ordered outside itself. Remember that setting a limit means already exceeding it.

The word “religion” comes from a Latin root meaning “to bind.” Prayer, fasting, all acts of asceticism: we call these actions religious not because they comprehend or contain God, but because they bind, curb our “I”. The actions we call religious, when cleared of magic and superstition, are an acknowledgment that we are connected.

Modern people find it increasingly difficult to pray because we tell ourselves that the world revolves around us. To pray is to press your face to the window, willing it to open beyond and beyond the self.

Jesus connects the love of God with the love of neighbor because there is no other way to love God whom we cannot see directly except to love those whom we see. Thus, love for God manifests itself in two ways. We pour ourselves out in love to others while we constantly strive to curb our self-image, our self-imposed isolation.

We are not heroes when we love God and others in ministry. We simply choose life, a life that contains us but does not limit us.