Love Is

As Love Does

It's Lent. From every pulpit far and near you will hear about the great profound love of Christ manifest through the Cross at Easter.
Unless this translates into real action, it is just empty symbolism and fancy rhetorical flourishing to raise money for over-marbleized church buildings.
The Pharisees were accused of "Lipservice"- you talk a good game but your heart is far from me.
The Pharisee were called "white-washed tombs full of dead men's bones"- You look shiny and slick and pretty clean on the outside but inside you are spiritually just dead.
The Pharisees loved to stand in their finery on streetcorners and have the coveted places at banquets- they were so self-impressed and full of themselves they had no room to consider the
hearts of the people.
Jesus sought to penetrate all that institutional crappola. He sought to teach people what real love really meant.

Would Jesus recognize himself anywhere in his church today and if so where exactly?
Would Jesus, that sandaled bearded Jew from the Gallilee recognize himself in or under pointy cone-headed hats covering pink and red yarmulkas?
You cannot destroy Love in the Name of Love. You cannot Deny Family in the name of the Holy Family. You cannot persecute women in the name of the Blessed Mother and think Jesus recognizes himself in you.
Where would Jesus find himself in the church today?
This is the real scandal of the Cross- people who elevate the institution that teaches Christ over Jesus himself, who IS LOVE incarnate.