Hungry for Love

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He then said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”

“Feed my sheep.” - John 21: 15-17

There is a deep hunger in every human heart, a longing that nothing seems to be able to satisfy. We hunger for love.

When I was in high school, I remember Mother Teresa writing about how she picked up a man from a Calcutta gutter one day. He was dying, in terrible condition, covered in worms and there was nothing they could do to save him. However they brought him back to the shelter and began cleaning him up. What did he say? This man had nothing and knew he would not survive. But he died with a radiant smile on his face saying, “I’ve lived an animal all these years but now I’m going to die like an angel: loved and cared for!” And Mother commented after this: see what love can do!

Jesus said to Peter: “Feed my sheep.” His flock is hungry and someone needs to feed them. But what are they hungry for? They’re hungry for love. That’s the deepest hunger in the heart of human beings. This hunger isn’t always acknowledged or recognized. People try to fill this longing with all sorts of things. They try to fill this with worldly success, or material goods, or food, or sleep, or many other things. And the less these things satisfy them, the more desperately they try to fill this void with counterfeit. But here’s the truth: It is love they hunger for and only love will satisfy them. We can be completely bereft of all other things, but if we know we are loved, there we can find great joy.

Of course the love of a human being is never quite enough either. It is God’s love that ultimately satisfies. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall never hunger.” We not only do we hunger for love, we hunger for God’s love. Some of you have had powerful encounters with Jesus Christ. What did you find there? Pardon my presumption, but I think I can guess: you found love. An intense, burning, firey love that was something greater than what you had ever known or imagined or can even adequately describe. And I’ll bet there was a joy that was deeper than anything you ever thought possible. This love is what you were made for and it was what you were hungering for all along. You were made for His Love.

What is the vocation of the priest? To feed the world’s hunger for Love.

With that in mind, let’s turn to the life of this local priest, Fr. Sebastian Rale.

There can be no doubt that the people Fr. Rale was called to be pastor were hungry. In 1646 Fr. Gabriel Druillettes baptized many members of the village. Miracles are recorded during the years Fr. Druillettes ministered to them. They experienced God’s love for them in a powerful way and the faith took deep roots among them. Then Fr. Druillettes was recalled to Quebec. For 45 years they had no permanent priest with them, no pastor, only the occasional visit of a missionary. They had experienced Christ’s love in the sacraments and now longed for them. Over and over again they petitioned the Jesuit superiors in Quebec to send them a priest until finally in 1695, Fr. Rale was sent.

In some ways, any priest could satisfy their hunger. The priest carries in his hands the power to bring the very heart of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament to his people. A priest can be a complete jerk and still satisfy that longing. But Fr. Rale did more than that: he learned to love the Abenaki people the way Jesus loved them.

Loving them meant getting to know them and learning to love the things they loved. Fr. Rale ate their food and did his best to like it, although he never quite developed the taste. He went with them on their hunting trips. He spent countless years learning the nuances of their language and even wrote the first French-Abenaki dictionary ever. He loved them and so wanted to know them.

Then he set to work. He built a beautiful church for them, ordering beautiful statues and ornamentation from Europe, making it rival even some of the churches he left back home in France. He offered Mass for them, heard their confessions, baptized their infants. He taught their children and started one of the first schools in Maine. When they were sick, he cared for them. When they needed advice, they came to him and sought his counsel. In fact, Fr. Rale writes that he became so busy, he barely had time to say his prayers or sleep. His flock was hungry for love, and he spent himself feeding that hunger out of love for them.

Do not underestimate the power of this. In the midst of the French and Indian Wars, the members of the Abenaki nation were used to be treated as trading partners, as military allies, but as friends and beloved children, not so much. That a white man would act only out of love for them, without thought of taking advantage of them or using them, was unusual. You can only imagine how much this meant to the tribe. They saw him as a father, whose job was to guide them, love them and protect them, and in fact their name for him was “our father.”

If you want to understand the drama of what later followed, this piece must be understood: that Fr. Rale was more than a mere functionary in the village, but a loving father. He loved his sheep the way Jesus the Good Shepherd loved them. For this reason when the English began calling for them to replace Fr. Rale with a protestant minister, the Abenakis refused to part with him. He brought them the love of Jesus in the sacraments. Moreover, he loved them as their father. Just as the good shepherd would rather die than leave his sheep at the mercy of the wolves, so too Fr. Rale would rather die than leave his flock without a loving father to care for them and bring them the sacraments.

This is the vocation of the priest: to love the sheep the same way the good shepherd does. To feed their hunger for love by bringing them His love.

Behold, the very heart of the good shepherd here before us. Today, I would ask you to pray that the hearts of our priests be conformed more and more to that of Jesus Christ. Pray for them, that they may love Jesus with all their hearts and in turn love the people of Maine the way Jesus does. Pray that young men may be attentive Jesus’ call to serve Him with their whole lives. And pray reparation for the failings of our priests.

At the end of the pilgrimage, after the account of the martyrdom of Fr. Rale is read, the talk concludes:

He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” [Jesus] said to him, “Feed my sheep. Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when he had said this, he said to him, “Follow me.” - John 21: 17-19

What just happened here? Peter has just promised to take of Jesus’ flock and what does Jesus do? He predicts Peter’s martyrdom.

In a way what Jesus is telling Peter is this: if you love my flock the way I love them, then you will lay down your life for those sheep just like I did.

There is little doubt that Fr. Rale fell in love deeply with these people that Jesus had entrusted to him. He gave his whole life to them. The way we know the depths of Fr. Rale’s love is by the way he behaved when things got tough.

Love leads you to do crazy things. Anyone who has ever fallen in love knows that. In a way what Fr. Rale did was crazy. Any man with any sense of self interest should have left the mission as soon as a price was set on his head. But when members of the tribe encouraged him to leave to save himself he responded, “What, do you take me for a base deserter?” The hired man leaves when he sees the wolf coming. The Good Shepherd loves his sheep too much to abandon them.

Then things got worse. An attempt was made to kidnap Fr. Rale. His cabin was raided and Fr. Rale was almost found. But after this near brush with death, look at what he writes to his brother: “Death alone can separate me from them.”

Fr. Rale learned to love the flock with the heart of the Good Shepherd. This caused him to sacrifice everything he had out of love for Christ and those Christ entrusted to him.

Our diocese needs priests, but not just any priests: we need holy priests. Our priests need our prayers so that they have the courage to love the way Jesus is asking them to love. Our young men need our prayers so that they have the courage to respond to such a lofty but difficult vocation: to give your entire life out of love.

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like yours.

Jesus, who loved us to the point of death, make our hearts like yours.

Jesus, who burned with love for every soul, make our hearts like yours.