Love Claims the Beloved

            Last year one of our finest Teens and her family gave me a copy of one of   my favorite pieces

of art.  This is a sculpture by Auguste Rodin called The Hand of God.  Perhaps you have seen pictures

of it or have seen one of Rodin’s many copies of it at an art museum.  I always stop to gaze at it when 

I’m in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  In this sculpture an enormous hand is cupped,

half closed.  Emerging from its palm are a man and a woman embracing each other.  A famous author 

tells how he was looking at this piece with a young girl he had brought to the museum, a girl of college 

age.  “It is beautiful, isn’t it?” the author said. 

            “No, I don’t like it,” the girl said.  “If only we could escape that terrible hand.”

            “But to escape from that hand would be to escape from love,” the author said. 

            “But, maybe I would prefer freedom,” the girl responded. 

            “But, maybe,” the author retorted, “we can only find freedom and love when we obey the 

Divine Hand.”

            The true religious person wants to “obey the bronze hand.”  The true religious person does 

not want to escape the Hand of God but to merge with the hand of God.

            We, or at least speaking for myself, I, have a long way to go.  So often I am at the level of doing 

this and that in some silly notion that I can appease God, as though He needs my rather meaningless 

actions. So often I am more than willing to say to God, “Take this action, this prayer, this sacrifice, but 

don’t take me.”

            But God wants me.  And he wants you.  And he doesn’t just want a bit of us.  He wants all of us.  

And so we come to today’s difficult Gospel reading, “Unless you turn your back on father or mother, wife 

or children, brother or sister, and your very selves you cannot be my followers.”

            Love demands a total claim upon the Beloved.  The married  are aware of this.  They know that 

they cannot expect their marriage to grow if they hold back part of themselves from each other. When 

they first considered how serious of a relationship they could establish with that girl or guy they felt so 

attracted to, they asked themselves, “Is this someone whom I can give myself to?  Will he or she accept 

me as I am?  Can I accept him or her totally as she or he is?”   Indeed the success of the marriage is 

directly proportional to the capability 

of the couple to enter into intimacy, to their ability to give and to share with each other.  Love claims the 

Beloved, totally.

            As true as this is in every relationship of love, this truth reaches its perfection in the relationship 

with the One who is Love Incarnate, with our Lord Jesus.  He has given himself totally to us. For the our relationship with Him to flourish, we have to accept his gift of himself and give ourselves totally to him.  

The relationship to the Lord must supersede all other relationships, family, friends, and even ourselves. 

The relationship to the Lord demands living his life and even following him in sacrifice. "You cannot be 

my follower unless you take up your cross."  The relationship to the Lord means putting him before our possessions.  "You cannot be my disciple unless you renounce all your possessions."

            We are in a love relationship with Jesus.  Sometimes we forget this.  We treat religion as an 

obligation rather than as an action of love. We are in a love relationship with our God.   But like all 

relationships, we have to work hard for the relationship to succeed. We have to make time for our 

Loved One.  We have to seek his presence in the community where we receive his intimacy in the s

acraments. We have to seek his presence in our homes where we unite his presence to the intimacy 

of our family. 

            As in all valued relationships, we have to protect our relationship with God from anything which 

would diminish its intensity.   That’s why we  have to avoid sin and the occasion of sin.  Our Christian 

morality is not a way of life to keep God happy.  He doesn’t need that. He’s perfectly happy.  Our Christian morality is a way of life to keep ourselves happy.  We grow in the intensity of His love when we fight off 

anything that destroys or diminishes this love. 

            Finally, as so many of our retired  couples proclaim with their lives, couples who have been married 

for forty, fifty or even sixty years, “Success in marriage results from looking for new ways to love.”   We 

have to look for new ways to love God and to allow his love to grow in us.

            Auguste Rodin’s sculpture expresses Jesus’ message in today’s Gospel.  We are in the hand of 

God.  We have been claimed by the Lord.  Happiness and love are found by letting him grasp us.  Only 

that which is within his hand has any importance at all.  All the rest is superfluous. 

            Love claims the Beloved.