Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter
Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; Ps 98:1, 2-3, 3-4 (2b); 1 Jn 4:7-10; Jn 15:9-17
Do you love as Jesus loves?
In my freshman year of college, I met this young woman who lived in the dorm next to mine, and we started dating. One evening, as Valentine’s Day was approaching, she said to me “I love you.” My response was also three words, but not the three she was expecting, I said “What is love?” Needless to say, that relationship came to an abrupt end.
Growing up in a family with seven older brothers, and several younger siblings, the words “I love you” were simply not used. And so, to some degree, when my girlfriend said she loved me, I really didn’t understand. At that point in my life, I truly wanted to know, what is love? While I had a strong feeling of affection and concern toward my family, I really didn’t grasp the concept of love. We never hugged, we barely shook hands, and that usually only happened during Mass at the sign of peace. Saying I love you, embracing in a hug my siblings, or even my parents, was simply something we didn’t do.
So what is love? Love is a word that is often overused in our society. We love our food. We love our TV shows. We love our toys. We love our sports. But if you look up the word love in a dictionary, the first and primary meaning in virtually every dictionary you use will be something along the lines of “a strong feeling of affection and concern toward another person.” This is the type of love God has for each of us. He loves each of us completely and totally. There is nothing we can say or do to make God love us more, or less. The question each of us needs to answer is “do we accept God’s love?”
God gave us free will, because he loves us. It is this free will that allows us to choose to either accept God’s love, or not. It is our free will that allows us to decide if we are going to love God in return, or not. God certainly wants us to love Him as He loves us. But God doesn’t demand, or even require us to love Him. God didn’t send his Son, Jesus Christ, to earth, to suffer and die on a cross to save us because we love Him, but because He loves us.
So how do we show our love to God?
We do it by following Jesus’ command, to “love one another as I have loved you.” For those of us that are parents, it is easy to love our children. We love them completely and totally, nothing they say or do can affect our love for them. And like God, we parents want our children to love us in return. But unlike God, we parents have faults, we sometimes make mistakes, we don’t always show our love for our children the way we should. And likewise, sometimes as children, we make mistakes and don’t show our love to our parents and siblings, like we should.
But loving another is not just for our families. We are called to love our fellow parishioners and our neighbors. We are called to love our classmates and co-workers. We are even called to love the slow driver in front of us making us late for an appointment. And we are even called to love those that have hurt us.
While Jesus is the best example for us to follow to learn to love like God loves, there are others in our lives that can also teach us how to love. A longtime member of this parish, Reggie Gingras, was an example for me on how to love as God loves. Reggie passed away on Easter Monday. With the exception of the last two times I saw her in the hospital as she was nearing death, every other encounter I had with Reggie always included her telling me, she loved me. And when she told you she loved you, you knew she truly did love you, it wasn’t an artificial statement, it wasn’t just something she said. She loved everyone she met, from the manager of the Rolling Stones, to the new friend she just met in the aisle at Wal-Mart. And she loved every member of this parish, whether she met you or not.
Another person in my life helping me to learn to love as Jesus loves, is my wife Nancy. She has helped me move from being a person asking the question “what is love?” to becoming a person that truly is loving, able to show love and to say those three words “I love you.”
By learning to love as Jesus loves, either directly from Jesus, or from others we encounter in our lives, we will begin to more deeply experience a complete joy in our lives. As Jesus says in the gospel, he gives us his command to love one another, so his “joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” As your joy becomes complete, you will experience more peace. It will allow you to plant the seeds of God’s love in others, allowing them to become more joyful, bringing more peace into their lives, allowing them to plant seeds of God’s love in others, allowing them, and us, to “bear fruit that will remain.”
If you haven’t told someone today you love them, make sure the day doesn’t end before you do. It might be your spouse or your Mom, a child or some other friend. Make a point of telling someone, every day, that you truly love them. But in some cases, maybe you can’t tell someone you love them, so maybe you can show your love by performing some action for them, such as saying a prayer for the slow driver in front of you, or for that person that hurt you or your family.
By making an effort every day to love another person, you will be on your way to loving as Jesus loves.
Just as Jesus and Reggie would say, I want to let you know, I truly love each and every one of you.
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