The Sixth Sunday of Easter [B]
Acts 10:25-26,34-35,44-48  +  1 Jn 4:7-10  +  Jn 15:9-17
May 6, 2018

“In this is love:  not that we have loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as expiation for our sins.”

Saint John, the Beloved Disciple, in his scriptural writings fleshes out his description of God as “love”.  In the last sentence of today’s Second Reading St. John does so very poignantly, telling us that “In this is love:  not that we have loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as expiation for our sins.”

The first part of St. John’s description insists on the primacy of God’s love.  God doesn’t wait to love you until He determines whether you have loved Him enough, or whether you will love Him in the future as He hopes.  God doesn’t stop loving you if you stop loving Him.  In a word, God’s Love is primary.  Our love for Him can only be a response, and any response from us cannot diminish His love for us.

But we all know from experience that confusion arises here.  Human beings feel at times as if God does not love them.  One reason for this feeling is that love—at least, divine love—is itself not a feeling.  When people expect God to make them feel good about themselves, or for that matter about Him, they can easily become confused about God’s Presence.  This doesn’t mean that our feelings are illusory, or that God cannot manifest Himself through emotions:  it’s to say that divine Love is not identical with positive emotions.

The second main reason that someone might feel that God no longer loves him is the fact that it’s not unusual for God to be absent from the human soul.  Yet God being absent from someone’s soul does not mean that God does not love that person.  There can be very different reasons for this absence, one negative and one positive.

On the one hand, the absence of God from a human soul can be the result of mortal sin.  A serious moral wrong that’s freely and knowingly chosen causes all grace to leave that soul.  What’s more, the presence of a mortal sin is like a force field surrounding one’s soul, blocking God’s love from penetrating the human soul.  Ironic though it may seem, it’s a sign of God’s love that He endows the human person with a free will strong enough to keep His own love at bay.

On the other hand, the absence of God from someone’s soul can be a sign of immanent growth.  Saints such as St. John of the Cross teach us how God spurs the disciple towards growth by removing Himself from the human soul, in order to increase the disciple’s longing for Him.  This teaches the human person to live for God alone, which means to live for authentic love alone.

Charity—the love of Christ—urges us forward throughout the course of earthly life:  to high school, to college, to our first full-time job, into our vocation, to further growth in holiness, even to death and Heaven’s gates.  It’s to convince us of this simple truth that we hear Jesus today:  “I command you:  love one another.”

Saturday of the Fifth Week of Easter
Acts 16:1-10  +  John 15:18-21
May 5, 2018

“I have chosen you out of the world….”

In this Easter season, we continue to hear in the First Reading about the flurry of apostolic activity that spread through the world following the first Christian Pentecost.  But what of Mary, the lowly Virgin, mother of the child who grew in this world in order to offer His life in sacrifice for our sins?  What about the mother of Him who is the Good News spread by the apostles throughout the world?  Where is Mary at Pentecost?

We might forget that she is the Mother of God, the Mother of Him through whom all things were made.  We might forget that she, too, was present in that upper room.  Why is she there?  She surely had no need to receive that fullness of the Holy Spirit who descended at Pentecost.  Her Pentecost—her Confirmation, so to speak—took place at the Annunciation, when the power of the Holy Spirit overshadowed her who had been sinless from the moment of her conception in the womb of Saint Anne.

At the Annunciation of the Good News, God became man:  Christ’s Body began forming within Mary’s womb.  Here in the upper room at Pentecost, that same Holy Spirit descends again, to overshadow the apostles.  Here in the womb of the upper room, where the first celebration of the Sacrifice of the Eucharist had been offered by Christ, the Church—the Body of Christ—was born, that the apostles might go forth into the world to preach the Gospel and offer their lives in sacrifice for Christ.

Friday of the Fifth Week of Easter
Acts 15:22-31  +  John 15:12-17
May 4, 2018

“This is my commandment:  love one another as I love you.”

Today’s Gospel passage is often chosen for Nuptial Masses.  It speaks to the reality of love.  It gives some concrete form to love.  This concreteness is needed when one lives—as you and I do—in a culture which equates love with warm, fuzzy feelings.

Today’s Gospel passage was written by St. John the Evangelist, who in one of his epistles tells us that “God is love” [1 John 4:8].  Today John quotes Jesus so as to give shape to the definition of God as love.  In terms of the divine Person of Jesus, John quotes Christ as explaining to us that “no one has greater love than… to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  The setting of today’s Gospel passage is the Last Supper.  In His own mind as He spoke these words, Jesus knew that He would give the ultimate example of such love the next day.

But the Church proclaims today’s Gospel passage during the midst of Easter.  The reason for this is that Christ doesn’t want His disciples simply to admire His sacrifice, but to enter into it.  To do what our Savior commands, we need the power of the Holy Spirit, whom the Father and Son will send at Pentecost.  In the Spirit of the Father and the Son, you can find the strength to love your neighbor as Jesus has loved you.

Saints Philip and James, Apostles
1 Corinthians 15:1-8  +  John 14:6-14
May 3, 2018

“Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.”

As is fitting for the feast of two apostles, the Scriptures for today’s feast highlight that the Church’s foundation is apostolic.  Of course, the role of the apostles is not limited to the Church’s beginning.

Those ordained to the office of bishop continue to carry out the work first entrusted to the apostles.  It’s true that each and every member of the Church has a vocation that is missionary in nature.  The word “apostle” literally means “one who is sent”.  Every Christian is called to “go outside himself” and share with others the natural and supernatural gifts he has received.  Most Christians do this chiefly through family life, and in the secular workplace and community.  We might say that the laity are apostles “ad extra”, outside the walls of the Church.

However, within the Church, those called to the office of bishop have a unique role.  While laypeople proclaim the Gospel within the domestic church and in the workplace and community, bishops proclaim the Gospel to all of the Church’s members, chiefly through the Sacred Liturgy.  The Gospel is meant—among other goals—to bring order to chaos, and mercy to the scars of sins.  Everyone who is a member of a family, a neighborhood, a parish, etc. knows how difficult it can be to cultivate unity.

Unity is the first of the Church’s four marks for a reason.  Apostolicity serves her unity.  Pray, then, for your local bishop and for our universal bishop, His Holiness the Pope, called to preside in charity over the Church on earth.

St. Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
Acts 15:1-6  +  John 15:1-8
May 2, 2018

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.”

The powerful metaphor that Jesus proclaims today—the Vinegrower, the Vine, and the branches with their fruit—is, like so many of the passages from John proclaimed by the Church during the Easter Season, a powerful exposition of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son.  Within this relationship we see our own place, as members of the Mystical Body of Christ.

John’s account of the Gospel is the most mystical and sublime of the four Gospel accounts, and is therefore also the most difficult to reach into and meditate upon.  Today’s metaphor opens a window into the sacred Teaching of the Beloved Disciple.

Begin with a simple question:  What is God the Father like as a Vinegrower?  This is a very simple, earthly and earthy image.  If you know anyone who is a gardener (or even more specifically, a vintner), you can picture some of the qualities that this image evokes.  The tenderness, patience, perseverance, and dedication that flow from this image teach us about the Love of the Father for His Son, and for us who are members of His Son’s Body.