Caritas Christi Urget Nos

Category: Easter

  • Thursday of the Second Week of Easter

    Thursday of the Second Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    In these Easter days, the Scriptures begin to speak to us about the gift of the Holy Spirit. This gift is not rationed, as Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel reading. This gift is empowering and renewing and, according to the Psalmist, de-marginalizing.

    We all know the kind of men the Apostles were. Yet now, given the gift of the Holy Spirit, they have been transformed completely. Cowardice has been replaced by something very close to bravado. Ineffectuality has been replaced by miracle work. Hiding has been replaced by boldness fired by the truth. In a sense, they have been resurrected in these Easter days. They are new creations because of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

    This is the gift that Jesus wants for us in these Easter days too. He wants us to know a complete transformation by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Having done penance and emptied ourselves of that which isn’t godly during Lent, we now have the grace of that Spirit to transform our lives, our hearts, and our desires during Easter.  Whatever it is that is lacking in us will be completely transformed in the Spirit so that we too can boldly proclaim the wonderful works of our God.

    That transformation happens little by little as we put ourselves in the presence of our God. We can do that in so many ways: taking quiet time for prayer, spending time with our Lord in adoration, reading Scripture for a few minutes each day, reaching out to others in prayerful service; all of these help us to be transformed in the Spirit. That’s how we can come to know how wonderful are the gifts that the Spirit is longing to bestow upon us, and how much they will transform us.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

    Alleluia!

  • Saturday in the Octave of Easter

    Saturday in the Octave of Easter

    Today’s readings

    We are confronted in today’s Gospel with something we all have to struggle with, and that is a reluctance to believe. In the disciples’ case, it was a slowness to believe based on the fact that they didn’t really have the resources that we do – like the Gospels and two millennia of Church teaching. They also had yet to receive the Holy Spirit.  So even though they did have Jesus’ words, they still didn’t understand them.

    We come to Mass today having been there, done that. Like I said, we have more resources: the Gospels and the Church and the Holy Spirit, and so it often seems like we should know better. And I think we do believe, at least in our heads. But when it comes to believing with our heats, it’s another thing entirely. How easy is it to believe that God loves us and has a plan for us when we are confronted with a difficult situation? When a loved one is dying? When we’ve lost a job? When the economy has eaten up our retirement? When we’ve just learned that we are seriously ill?

    But like the disciples, Jesus comes to us today and tells us that our faith must be the bedrock of our lives: helping us to be joyful in the good times and providing a source of strength in our bad times. And just when we are all thinking about ourselves – about what we need, about what we’re going through – just when the disciples are trying to figure out what to do next – Jesus makes it clear: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” Get back on the horse, get back into life, live the faith and be a witness. That’s the life of the disciple, that’s the life of faith.

    And we can do all that today and every day because of what we celebrate on this Easter Day: Christ is risen, and sin and death have been destroyed. God does have a plan for us, he does love us, and he has done all he needs to do to prove it.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Thursday in the Octave of Easter

    Thursday in the Octave of Easter

    Today’s readings

    There are a couple of kinds of witnesses in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  The first, in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, are the Jewish witnesses who were swayed by the religious establishment to demand the crucifixion of Jesus and the release of Barabbas, an insurrectionist and a murderer.  Peter calls them to repentance so they can receive the full healing of God, just as the crippled man in yesterday’s first reading was given not silver and gold, but indeed the full healing of God.  Just as he walked in newness of life, so their repentance could allow them the same.

    The second kind of witnesses are the disciples.  Their amazement is unfolding and they are trying to make sense of everything when Jesus appears in their midst and offers them peace.  He makes it clear that everything the prophets foretold had come to fruition in him, and the glory of their message was finally among them.  They were witnesses of all of that and are called to proclaim the message.

    We are witnesses too.  If we have been witnesses to insurrection and murder, and everything that is not Christ, then we too are called to repentance so that we can walk in newness of life.  Then hearing the Gospel, we are witnesses of all that Christ did on our behalf and it is our job to go out and proclaim the message.

    We are witnesses of these things.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Tuesday in the Octave of Easter

    Tuesday in the Octave of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Letting go of things is harder than we can sometimes even admit.  I think that’s what was going on with Mary Magdalene.  And we are just like her: we want to hold on to things and people as they are, because what is familiar is so very comfortable to us.  I think sometimes that’s true regardless of whether the familiar is positive or negative.  So many times we hold on to whatever we have and refuse to let them go because it’s as if we’re afraid we’ll be giving away some piece of ourselves.  So then what happens is that we hang on to images of ourselves or other people in our life that are outdated, and stifle any room for growth.  We hang on to resentments or past hurts and never give any chance for healing.  We hang on to unhealthy relationships and never give ourselves a chance to break the cycle of pain they bring.  We hang on to bad work situations and miss following our true calling.

    What Mary needed to hear from Jesus in today’s Gospel was that she had to stop hanging on to things as they were, and to allow God’s promise to be fully revealed.  The time for mourning was over, it was now time to rejoice and begin spreading the word that the Gospel was coming to its fruition.  She had to begin that by going and spreading the word to the other disciples.

    We too, have to stop holding on to our past hurts and resentments and outdated notions of the world, ourselves and our relationships so that God’s promise can be fully revealed in us.  The message of Easter joy means that we must begin that by spreading the news that Jesus is doing something new in us and in our world, and make sure that everyone knows about it. We can do that by examining our lives every day and reflecting on what God is doing in us and how we are responding to it.  This is the kind of daily reflection that will help us to let go of what is unhelpful and grasp firmly to that which will lead us to Christ.

    As we continue to live lives of conversion like this, we too can proclaim with Mary Magdalene on this Easter day, and every day, “We have seen the Lord!”

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!

  • Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of Our Lord

    Easter Sunday of the Resurrection of Our Lord

    Today’s readings

    I often tell the children in our school that if there’s just one thing they ought to know about God, one thing they ever learn about God, and that is that God loves them more than anything, that would be enough.  It’s the thing that I hope they remember me saying, because that’s the message I feel called to proclaim.  God’s love is the most important thing we have in this life, the most precious gift we will ever receive.

    It is true gift, because there’s nothing, not one thing, that we can do to earn it.  Filthy in sin as we are, we certainly don’t do it. And entitled as we can sometimes be, there is no way we can ever say that we have a right to it.  But we get it anyway.  God freely pours out his love on us sinners, not because we are good, but because he is.

    God loves us first and loves us best, and it’s a love that will totally consume us, totally transform us, if we let it.  It’s a love that can break our stony hearts and transform our sadness into real joy. It’s a love that can change us from people of darkness to real live people of light and joy.  It’s a love that obliterates the power of sin and death to control our eternity, and opens up to us the glory of heaven.

    And even if we live our lives passing from one thing to the next and barely noticing anything going on around us, we have to pause and appreciate God’s love on this most holy morning.  This is the morning that confounded Mary of Magdala; it’s the morning that got Peter and John out of their funk and sent them running.  It’s the morning that John finally starts to get what Jesus was getting at all this time.  He saw and believed.

    He saw that his Lord was not there, that death could not hold him.  He saw that the grave was no longer the finality of existence.  He saw that Love – real Love – is in charge of our futures.  He saw that there is real hope available to us hopeless ones.

    “To him all the prophets bear witness,
    that everyone who believes in him
    will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.”

    That quote, from Saint Peter’s testimony in the Acts of the Apostles, today’s first reading, is the Easter faith to which we are all called.  We have to stop living like this is all there is. We have to stop loving our sins more than we love God.  We have to live like a people who have been loved into existence, and loved into redemption.

    That means we have to put aside our disastrous sense of entitlement. We have to learn to receive love so deep that it calls us to change.  And we have to love in the same way too, so that others will see that and believe.

    We’ll never find real love by burying ourselves in work or careers.  We’ll do nothing but damage our life if we seek to find it in substance abuse.  We’ll never find love by clinging to past hurts and resentments.  We are only going to find love in one place, or more precisely in one person, namely, Jesus Christ. We must let everything else – everything else – go.

    Today, Jesus Christ broke the prison-bars of death, and rose triumphant from the underworld.  What good would life have been to us, if Christ had not come as our Redeemer?  Because of this saving event, we can be assured that our own graves will never be our final resting places, that pain and sorrow and death will be temporary, and that we who believe and follow our risen Lord have hope of life that lasts forever.  Just as Christ’s own time on the cross and in the grave was brief, so our own pain, death, and burial will be as nothing compared to the ages of new life we have yet to receive.  We have hope in these days because Christ is our hope, and he has overcome the obstacles to our living.  

    The good news today is that we can find real love today and every day of our lives, by coming to this sacred place. It is here that we hear the Word proclaimed, here that we partake of the very Body and Blood of our Lord. An occasional experience of this mystery simply will not do – we cannot partake of it on Easter Sunday only.  No; we must nurture our faith by encountering our Risen Lord every day, certainly every Sunday, of our lives, by hearing that Word, and receiving his Body and Blood.  Anything less than that is seeking the living one among the dead.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    The Easter Vigil in the Holy Night

    Today’s readings

    The Paschal Triduum, as you may know, is a long, three-day liturgy that begins with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, continues with the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Good Friday, and concludes tonight, here, as we celebrate the Great Easter Vigil in the Holy Night.  So right now, we are more or less three-quarters into the celebration, and we’ve covered a lot of ground.  Back on Thursday night, Father John urged us not to be mere spectators of these events, not to observe the celebration from 500 feet, but to put ourselves in the story and experience that evening with the disciples.  He spoke of the various movements in that celebration: the eating of the Passover meal at the Last Supper, the washing of the feet, the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist.  And finally, the agony in the garden that culminated in the arrest of Jesus.

    This entering into the events is well-taken, and very much part of our Catholic tradition.  Saint Ignatius of Loyola taught his brothers to enter into the scriptures that way, and to make an active meditation placing oneself in the story as primary in their prayer lives.  The Society of Jesus continues to teach and observe that spirituality.  But antecedent to that, we have as a primary part of Catholic theology, liturgy, and spirituality something called anamnesis.  One could translate anamnesis as memory, remembrance, or commemoration, but none of those is especially adequate.  Anamnesis is a remembering in the sense of entering into the event as if it were in the present, of being part of the event itself.  So yes, Deacon Greg, we were there when they crucified my Lord!

    If you’re a cook or baker, maybe you’ve had the experience of making a family recipe, and it brings to mind the loved one who taught it to you, and then you remember a story you shared when that person made it, and then that loved one is almost present to you, and you shed a tear mixed with a smile and a tug at your heart.  That’s a little bit of what anamnesis is like.  Placing oneself at the Last Supper, in the Upper Room, at the Garden of Gethsemane, and even at Golgotha and the Empty Tomb and letting those events change you as Father John suggested, that’s anamnesis.  It’s realized most perfectly in the celebration of the Eucharist, where we don’t just recall the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, but are spiritually present there with all the people of every time and place in every church in the world, on earth and in heaven; where we don’t just receive a symbol of the Lord, but actually receive his body, blood, soul and divinity in the consecrated host.  Anamnesis is powerful because it catches us up in the divine life of our Lord, who came to gather up and redeem our broken humanity.

    Father Ramon continued the anamnesis yesterday afternoon as we gathered to continue the Triduum Liturgy with the Commemoration of our Lord’s Passion.  He invited us to call to mind the ways we’ve failed the Lord, which moves us to silence in what was a somber celebration.  We then venerated a cross, which symbolized that Cross that was the Altar of Our Lord’s Sacrifice, and finally we were fed with the Eucharist, consecrated on Thursday night, which nourished us with the Lord’s strength to find true contrition and Divine Mercy.

    The anamnesis continued during this evening’s extensive Liturgy of the Word.  In it, we have heard stories of our salvation, God’s saving action in the world throughout all time.  Each of our readings has been a stop in the history of God’s love for us.  God’s plan for salvation began back at the beginning of it all.  Each of the days was hallowed with precious creation, and all of it was created and pronounced good.  Then Abraham’s faithfulness and righteousness earned us a future as bright as a zillion twinkling stars.  Later, as Moses and the Israelites stood trapped by the waters of the Red Sea, God’s providence made a way for them and cut off their pursuers, making the future safe for those God calls his own.  The prophet Isaiah calls us to seek the Lord while he may be found, not spending our lives on things that fail to satisfy, but investing in our relationship with God that gives us everything.  The prophet Ezekiel foretells the re-creation all humanity will experience as they come to know Christ and are filled with the Spirit.  Saint Paul rejoices in the baptism that has washed away the stains of sin as we have died and risen with Christ, and has brought us into a new life that leads ultimately to God’s kingdom.  And finally, our Gospel tonight tells us not to be afraid, to go forth into the Galilee of our future and expect to see the Risen Lord.  And in all of it, we are present, if we accept our Lord’s invitation to enter in.

    “You shall be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:28).  I love that last line from the last of the Old Testament readings we heard tonight.  There is a covenant, there has always been a covenant, there always will be a covenant. God created us in love, and he loves us first and best.  No matter where we may wander; no matter how far from the covenant we may stray, God still keeps it, forever and always.  We will always be his people and he will always be our God.  If I had to pick a line that sums up what we’re here for tonight, what we’ve been here for these last 40 days of Lent, that would be it.

    And that covenant is pivotal truth in this time of apathy, falsity, and general disinterest.  In all of that, the Church serves as a beacon of truth and grace and mercy as she reflects the glory of our Risen Lord.  Our world may indeed be jaded by corruption, hatred, violence, crime, war, racism, lack of concern for the lives of the unborn and the vulnerable, neglect of the poor, and so many other maladies.  But when we accept the covenant in our lives, we can be transformed, and become that beacon, and lead those disaffected by the world to the glorious light of God’s redeeming presence.

    We have journeyed with our Lord for three days now.  We ate with him, we prayed through the night with him, we saw him walk the way of the Cross and tearfully recalled his crucifixion.  We reverenced the Cross, joining our own crosses to his.  Now we’ve stayed up all night and shared the stories of our salvation, with eager excitement at the ways God has kept that covenant through the ages.  A roaring fire shattered the darkness, and a candle was lit to mingle with the lights of heaven.  Then grace had its defining moment as Christ shattered the prison-bars of death and rose triumphant from the underworld.

    It’s so important that we enter into Lent and the Triduum every year.  Not just because we need to be called back from our sinfulness to the path of life – yes, there is that, but it’s not primary here.  What is so important is that we see that the Cross is our path too.  In this life we will have trouble: our Savior promises us that.  But the Cross is what sees him overcome the world and all the suffering it brings us.  We will indeed suffer in this life, but thanks be to God, if we join ourselves to him, if we take up our own crosses with faithfulness, then we can merit a share in our Lord’s resurrection, that reality that fulfills all of the salvation history that we’ve heard in tonight’s readings.

    Our birth would have meant nothing had we not been redeemed.  If we were born only to live and die for this short span of time, how horrible that would have been.  But thanks be to God, the sin of Adam was destroyed completely by the death of Christ! The Cross has triumphed and we are made new!  Dazzling is this night for us, and full of gladness!  Because our Lord is risen, our hope of eternity has dawned, and there is no darkness which can blot it out.  We will always be God’s people, and he will always be our God!

    And so, with great joy on this most holy night, in this, the Mother of all Vigils, we rightfully celebrate the sacrament of holy Baptism.  Our Elect will shortly become members of the Body of Christ through this sacrament which washes away their sins.  Then they will be confirmed in the Holy Spirit and fed, for the first time, on the Body and Blood of our Saving Lord.  It’s a wonderful night for them, but also for us, as we renew ourselves in our baptismal promises, and receive our Lord yet again, to be strengthened in our vocation as disciples.

    We are and always will be God’s people.  God has made new his glorious covenant through the resurrection of our Christ.  And so, having come through this hour to be sanctified in this vigil, we will shortly be sent forth to help sanctify our own time and place.  Brightened by this beautiful vigil, we now become a flame to light up our darkened world.  That is our ministry in the world.  That is our call as believers.  That is our vocation as disciples.  “May this flame be found still burning – IN US! – by the Morning Star. The one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son, who coming back from death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns forever and ever.  Amen.”

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • The Solemnity of Pentecost

    The Solemnity of Pentecost

    Todays’ readings

    Words contain a lot of power.  We know that well, because sometimes we say the wrong things, or these days, text the wrong things, and we see how it upsets people we love.  And equally we experience the power of someone saying just the right thing at the right time and we see how that expression of love changes everything.  Words can convey a range of emotions from love to hate, and everything in between.  Words can start an argument, but the right words can diffuse a really bad situation.  We’ve seen it so many times.

    Most of us receive the gift of speech at birth, and come into it during our childhood.  We develop the gift of speech throughout our lives, perhaps learning foreign languages, or become skilled speakers.  Speech is crucial to living in society.  Speech allows us to communicate with others, to develop relationships with them, and to understand their story.  But sometimes speech is used to demean others, to break relationship and marginalize them.  We have to be careful, really careful, how we use our gift of speech.

    So it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to say anything really good.  The only way that we can say “Jesus is Lord,” as Saint Paul tells us in our second reading today, is by the Holy Spirit.  The only way that we can witness to the faith, is by the Holy Spirit.  That was true of the first Apostles.  Remember what happened to them right after the events of Good Friday.  They scattered.  They were frightened, and they fled the opportunity to talk to anyone.  When they did speak, they put their foot in their mouths.  Peter used his gift of speech to deny that he even knew the Lord, let alone witness to the Lord’s power to save.  At that time, the Apostles couldn’t even fashion words to describe what they were experiencing, so they were never going to be able to spread the Gospel.

    Until Pentecost.  Receiving the gift of the promised Holy Spirit, the Advocate that Jesus promised to send them, they are able not only to preach the Gospel, but to preach it in a way that people who spoke different languages were all able to understand it.  The outpouring of the Holy Spirit brings everything together for them, and now, only now, are they able to say that Jesus is Lord!

    The absence of the Holy Spirit is unparalleled sadness. We can’t say – or do – anything really good without the advocacy of the Holy Spirit to inspire – literally breathe into us – the goodness for which we were created.  The sequence today proclaimed it well:

    Where you are not, we have naught,
    Nothing good in deed or thought,
    Nothing free from taint of ill.

    So when we receive the Holy Spirit, we are inspired to say and do good things too.  The Holy Spirit will inspire us to speak many kinds of words in many situations.  We can depend on the Spirit to give us the words when we don’t have them.  Saint Paul teaches that the Spirit even prays in us when we can’t pray, expressing our needs in groanings when we can’t find the words to say.  So we can depend on the Holy Spirit to inspire us to speak in many ways:

    • Words of comfort to those who are going through difficult times. Maybe just by being with them and saying nothing at all.
    • Words of challenge when we are in a situation that is veering off course, and others are urging us to go the wrong way.
    • Words of correction when someone we love is acting out or not living up to their full potential.
    • Words of reconciliation when we seek to heal a broken relationship.
    • Words of vision when we are part of a group that is seeking to do something new.
    • Words of healing when we comfort another person who has been wronged by others.
    • Words of change when we stand up for what is right in a society that wants to do what it wants to do.
    • Words of mercy when we let go of a grudge, or forgive someone who has hurt us.

    The Holy Spirit will give us the right words for all of this at the right time, and we will be able to speak them in a way that everyone who needs to understand them can understand them.  We may never be able to speak multiple languages – I sure can’t! – but in the Holy Spirit we will be able to proclaim that Jesus is Lord in our words and actions and no one will be able to miss the significance of that – everyone will understand it, no matter what language they speak.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

  • Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    “Do you love me more than these?”

    It’s a question that cuts to the heart.  Peter had just betrayed his friendship with Jesus and his commitment to the Gospel by denying his Lord not once, but three times: “I tell you, I do not know the man you are talking about.”  This is a poignant meeting of the two of them, the first time they have been alone together, since those words of betrayal were spoken.  And Jesus’ words to Peter in this moment are a mixture of comfort, challenge, and warning.

    So first, comfort.  And this might not looking comforting on the face of it.  Just as Peter had spoken words of betrayal three times, three times Jesus asks the question: “Peter, do you love me?”  Yes, the question cuts to the heart, but it is also comfort, because with each asking, Jesus is healing Peter from the inside out.  Healing never begins until the truth is spoken: “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.”

    Then come words of challenge: “Feed my sheep.”  When we are forgiven or graced in any way, we, like Peter, are then challenged to do something about it.  Feed my sheep, follow me, give me your life, come to know my grace in a deeper way.  Never do we receive grace only for ourselves.  Grace is for us, but we are meant to grace others once we’ve received it. 

    And then words of warning: “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.”  When we give ourselves over to God, that necessarily means that we might have to go in a direction we might not otherwise choose.  It necessarily means that we have to give up our own plans and follow God.  We have to let him take us where we do not want to go, so that we can be the ones we were always supposed to be.

    Jesus then summarizes all of it by saying “Follow me.”  No matter what we disciples have done in our past, no matter how many times we have messed up or in what ways, there is always forgiveness if we give ourselves over to our Savior and our friend.  If we follow him, there is mercy and grace and forgiveness – and challenge.  That’s the life of discipleship.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter

    Today’s readings

    Today’s first reading always fascinates me.  Paul and Silas are in a terrible situation, not for the first or last time, I might add.  But just look at how their vibrant faith allows God to do things in and through them that are nothing short of miraculous.  First, there’s the earthquake that brings down the prison walls, although Paul and Silas did not take advantage of the situation.  Then there’s the conversion of the jailer, who was an employee of the Romans, and so would have been expected to worship their pagan gods, and he probably had up until this very moment.  You might also note the rather miraculous faith of Paul and Silas, who despite being very badly mistreated on account of Jesus, did not abandon their faith but actually grew stronger in it.  Authentic faith, lived in freedom, makes possible the salvation of many, many souls.

    Just observing the story as it unfolds in our Liturgy of the Word, it’s all so amazing, although Paul and Silas probably just viewed it as part and parcel of the life they had been called to live.  They had faith in Jesus and they probably didn’t expect anything less than the miracles they were seeing!  The baptism of the Roman guard’s household in particular, was a huge win for the kingdom of God, and Paul and Silas wouldn’t have expected anything less, it seems.

    People of great faith experience great miracles.  This is not to say that all their troubles go away or that they can wave a wand and prison walls tumble down.  Paul and Silas were still imprisoned, and continued to be hounded by the people and the government because of their faith.  But the miracles always come through the abiding presence of Christ.  These God-moments give us strength when we need it most.  It might not be a huge thing, maybe just a kind word from a stranger that comes at the right moment, a phone call from a friend that makes our day, an answer to prayer that is not what we expected but exactly what we needed.  The Psalmist today has that same great faith: “Your right hand saves me, O Lord,” he sings.  Let us pray that our hearts and eyes and minds would be open to see the miracles happening around us, and that we might live authentic faith for the sake of the kingdom of God.

    Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

  • The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    The Sixth Sunday of Easter

    Today’s readings

    It’s interesting to me that some of the first things we ever learn about God are also some of the most foundational, most important things we learn about God.  One such notion is that God is love.  We’ve learned that, probably, when we were small children.  But theologically, it bears out and serves us well in our adult lives.  So I don’t know if you were counting or not, but between the second reading and the Gospel, the word “love” was used in one form or another eighteen times.  So it’s pretty easy to see where the Church is leading us in today’s Liturgy of the Word.  Love is a theme that runs through John’s Gospel and the letters of Saint John: John’s point is that the Gospel is summed up in that God is love, that foundational notion we learned when we were little children.

    Now we get all kinds of notions about what love is and what it’s not.  Our culture feeds us mostly false notions, unfortunately, and it gets confusing because love can mean so many different things.  I can say, “cookies are my favorite food – I love cookies!” and I think we can all agree that’s not the kind of love Jesus wants us to know about today.  When we say “love” in our language, we could mean an attraction, like puppy love, or we could mean that we like something a lot, or we might even be referring to the sexual act.  And none of that is adequate to convey the kind of love that is the hallmark of Jesus’ disciples.  All of these fall short of what Jesus wants us to know about love.

    So I think we should look at the Greek word which is being translated “love” here.  That word is agape.  Agape is the love of God, or love that comes from God.  It is outwardly expressed in the person of Jesus Christ, who came to show the depth of God’s love by dying on the Cross to pay the price for our many sins.  So that’s the kind of love that Jesus is talking about today; it’s kind of a benchmark of love that he is putting out there for our consideration.

    I love when my engaged couples pick today’s Gospel for their wedding Gospel.  Very often, they pick it because it sounds pretty and it says nice things about love, which are obviously pertinent to a wedding liturgy.  But I like it because it gives them quite the challenge!  To really see what Jesus meant by love in today’s Gospel, all we have to do is to look at Jesus.  His command is that his disciples – including us, of course – should “Love one another as I have loved you.”  And the operative phrase there is: “as I have loved you.”   Meaning, “in the same way I have loved you.”  And we can see how far Jesus took that – all the way to the cross.  He loved us enough to take our sins upon himself and nail them to the cross, dying to pay the price for those sins, and being raised from the dead to smash the power of those sins to control our eternity.  So the love that Jesus is talking about here is fundamentally sacrificial; it is a love that wills the good of the other as other.  And he says it rather plainly in one of my favorite pieces of Holy Scripture: “No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  This sacrificial quality a vital property of agape love.

    And the disciples clearly were called to that kind of sacrificial love.  They were persecuted, thrown out of the synagogues, beaten for stirring up trouble, put to death for their faith in Christ.  Like their Savior, they literally laid down their lives for their friends.  That is what disciples do.  And so, we disciples hear that same command too.   Now, of course, we may never be asked to literally die for those we love, –although many in the world do that every day – but we are absolutely called on to die in little ways: to give up our own self-interests, our own selfishness, our own comforts, our own opinions, for the sake of others.  Love always costs us something, but real love, agape love, is worth it.

    So I think we should look for opportunities this week to love sacrificially, to love in ways that maybe we don’t do every day, ways that we may never do unless we think about doing them and make a decision to do them.  Doing a chore at home, or a job at work, that’s not our job and not making a big thing of it.  What might be important here is to not even call attention to the fact that it was we who did it.  Finding an opportunity to encourage a spouse or child with a kind word that we haven’t offered in a long time.  Picking the neighbor’s trashcan up out of the street when it’s been a windy day.  It doesn’t matter how big or small the thing is we do, what matters is the love we put into it.  When we make the decision to do something little for the sake of love, the joy we find in that act can help us to make it a habit of life, so that those little things become even bigger.  That kind of loving transforms families, heals past hurts, and can even make our little corner of the world a more beautiful place.  The love of God, agape love, offered most perfectly in the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross, transformed our eternity.  That same love of God, lived in each one of us, can transform our world.

    Saint Theresa of Calcutta once said, “I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I do know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will not ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?’  Rather he will ask, ‘How much love did you put into what you did?’”  When we are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to love, there is no way we can miss the joy that Jesus wants us to have today.  “Love one another as I have loved you” might be a big challenge, but it absolutely will be the greatest joy of our lives.

    Christ is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!