31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

In our Gospel this weekend Jesus sums up the entirety of the Scriptures with the simple teaching to “love God and love neighbor.”  Christianity IS that simple…but it’s not that easy!  Growing in love of God and others is painful: like the pain and frustration you see go across a child’s face when they have to learn how to share with someone else, we experience that same pain of transformation as we say goodbye to our selfish inclinations and learn to open ourselves up to love of God and others – which makes us become more of the person God created us to be!  Our belief in Purgatory (which separates us as Catholics from all other Christians) is rooted in this idea of transformation from the inside out.  Heaven is a place where every individual completely loves God and completely loves others…that transformation, those growing pains, have to take place at some point, whether during this life or after.