Do We Have the Guts...?, preached on October 30, 2026

So with that in mind, let's turn to St. Paul because he talks about, I hold you in my heart.

oh he's holding us in our hearts you know that that soft fuzzy cuddly saint paul no and he talks about yearning for you all with the affection of christ jesus but the word in the greek was spelankna which could mean heart but it could also mean guts so he's saying that at at a deep visceral pre-verbal, pre-cognitive level he had, switching to Latin, amor bene valentiae, switching to English, that intense urging, desiring the best for the beloved, which is, for all of us, Christ our Lord.

And he wanted that not only for the sake of the victory and fulfillment of our Lord, but because he actually loved the people he was writing to.

He had more than just an affection for them.

It was a mission of his heart.

It was the identity of his life that those who are dear to him would become one in Christ.

Well, what has that got to do with all of us? We don't have to be bestie with all of our neighbors, he said with a sigh of relief.

We don't even have to like everybody all of the time.

But a desideratum of our heart should be for our hearts, our guts, at some fundamental orientation, have a desire that all of our neighbors live and die as saints and enjoy the beatific vision forever.

and it's something that we can't explain away or it says that on page seven paragraph two of this book that i'm supposed to want that thing it has to be something that whatever else happens that is still at the top of our wish list that our charity for our neighbor in response to the divine initiative revealed in the heart of christ that our charity of our neighbor is something that can't be forgotten and can't be explained away.

That no matter what else happens and whatever else may fail, that stubborn love for a neighbor in response to the love of Christ revealed to the sacred heart of our Lord, that stubborn love will animate us and drive us for every moment that we can draw breath.

Now, having a good authority, that doesn't happen as a sheer act of the will, and it's certainly not a mood of any degree of constancy, but it is a fundamental orientation of our lives, and it is a work of the heart of Christ within our heart.

So my suggestion is that we spend some time today asking our Lord to transform us, to change our heart, to win our hearts over, to make it more like his so that we can be as charitable to our neighbor as our Lord has been to us.