“No one can serve two masters.
Either you will hate the one and love the other,
or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
Matthew 6:24
(the hydrangeas are quite stunning this year, the first time in a couple of years /Julie Cook / 2018)
Years and years ago…in what was once another lifetime…
I was once a young gal in college who worked summers up in the mountains of
North Carolina at a Christian camp for girls.
I loved my summers working at camp.
For all sorts of reasons.
I’ve written about it before…as well as to how that time spent as a camp counselor
answered my prayer about whether I was to remain an Education Major or switch to Journalism.
Those summers were basically my green light from God…
but like I say, I’ve written about that before, a few years back,
writing all about how and why I spent the majority of my adult life in the classroom.
And so if you know anything about camps or have ever attended a summer camp,
church camp, etc—
well, you know that there are always going to be camp songs.
Both silly and fun songs.
One such song has lent itself to the title of today’s post…
“Darling you can’t love one…
Darling, you can’t love one, darling you can’t love one…
you can’t love one and still have fun
I’m leaving on a midnight train la di da, um huh, oh boy…”
On and on goes the counting and the rhymes…
Darling, you can’t love two, darling you can’t love two,
you can’t love two and still be true,
I’m leaving on a midnight train…la di da, um hum, oh boy…
Hence the title for today’s post…you can’t love two.
And there’s a lot of truth in that one line.
As we are reminded we cannot serve two masters.
We cannot love both masters, whomever or whatever, they may be.
We will love one and resent the other.
And so it is with this thought in mind that our favorite rouge Bishop has
offered a lovely homily marking the Frist Sunday following
the blessed Trinity…better known as the feast of the Trinity.
The first Sunday following Pentecost and marking 50 days since Easter Sunday.
According to CatholicCulture.org a nice historical explanation of the
feast day of the Trinity is…
“The fundamental dogma, on which everything in Christianity is based,
is that of the Blessed Trinity in whose name all Christians are baptized.
The feast of the Blessed Trinity needs to be understood and celebrated as a
prolongation of the mysteries of Christ and as the solemn expression of our faith
in this triune life of the Divine Persons,
to which we have been given access by Baptism and by the Redemption won for
us by Christ.
Only in heaven shall we properly understand what it means, in union with Christ,
to share as sons in the very life of God.
The feast of the Blessed Trinity was introduced in the ninth century and
was only inserted in the general calendar of the Church in the fourteenth century by
Pope John XXII. But the cultus of the Trinity is, of course, to be found throughout
the liturgy.
Constantly the Church causes us to praise and adore the thrice-holy
God who has so shown His mercy towards us and has given us to share in His life.”
In his homily (all of 8 minutes of which I’ve provided the clip below) Bishop Ashenden
reads to us from the Book of Samuel…1 Samuel, chapter 3 starting with verse 1.
This is where God basically explains that following a political world,
or any other sort of world for that matter is not better than living one’s life by
following the Spirit.
We see that God offers opportunity after opportunity to those who stubbornly continue
to refuse His offerings…
So naturally, He tires of such folly and foolishness and replaces them with those more willing.
Just as we read later in the book of Samuel about God losing patience with the folly of
King Saul and allows him to be replaced.
This idea comes into play again in the Book of Revelation when God tells the 7 churches
what happens when they opt to live for and with the world and her culture…
rather than the life and world of the Spirit.
All of which boils down to what extent they, the churches,
will be given the Holy Spirit—or more aptly, not be given.
The good Bishop explains that it is “the Spirit versus those who practice merely “religion”
rather than practicing a living relationship with God.”
Woe to those preferring to go their own way…
Enter Jesus—
The sacrificial lamb who came to find us, love us and bring us home.
And yet we still remain fixed to live a life of the cultural…
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