6th
Sunday of Easter – May 16, 2018
I
–The gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Gentiles too.
R
–The Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power.
II
– God is love.
A
– Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord, and my Father will love
him and we will come to him.
G –No
one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
+ It may almost sound like a campaign kind of logic: Jesus
in the gospel passage could be observed to be building himself up when he says there is no greater love than to lay down
one’s life for one’s friends – and you can see I have done that, so am I
not wonderful? – will you not elect me to public office? Well, the truth of the
matter is that he is more than wonderful,
because he is not just “some man” who “laid down his life for his pals.” The
real story here is that he is the “God-Man,” who nevertheless laid down his
life in order to save his enemies (not
his friends).
The whole reason Jesus came to
us at all is because our relationship of friendship with God was so shattered
and so broken that it could never be put back together again by anyone living
on this planet. So he came from “beyond the stars” to save us, forgive us our
sins and throw open the gates of heaven so we could enter and rejoice with him
and all others who want to be there – forever!
And so now, it is at this
point, because Jesus did what he came to do: prove his love by dying on the
Cross and rising again: that he can add just one more thing – to “seal the
deal”: he tells us how to retain his
salvific actions in our own histories and lives: remain in my love, remain in this friendship, love one another –
self-sacrificially – like I did do for you, and even if needs be, in some rare
cases to the point of death – you must do everything that I have commanded you to do out of love for me.
And
these things are not burdensome, there are not hundreds of commands written in
some lofty code as in the days of Moses: what I give you is the Beatitudes, I give you my sayings; I give you my parables; I give you my sermons. The message hidden in all these
manifestations is actually very simple: GOD
IS LOVE! That is what I came to tell you! And – since your baptism – you live in God – therefore you live in love – so keep that love alive – experience the great dynamic energy that it
engenders – and you will be saturated in
joy and peace and hope; and with St. Paul, you will be able to go out and
bring this message to all nations –
beginning with the people I place right around you at arm’s length this day,
and every day of the coming week.
It was an exciting
evangelistic undertaking that would be underway in a couple of weeks’ time with
the arrival of the Spirit on Pentecost – and arming his beloved apostles with
faith and love – the world would never be the same!
With gratitude in our hearts,
O Lord, we thank you for all you have done – in loving us so very, very much –
and we recommit ourselves today to surrendering
ourselves entirely to Your Will and Care: you are God, you can never let us
go astray if we cling to you, adore you and glorify you with all our hearts!
Sing
joyfully to the Lord, all you lands; break into song; sing praise.
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