Homily for Sunday, 10 May 2015– Sixth Sunday of Easter

Readings of the day: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

“This is my commandment: love one another as I love you,” Jesus says to his disciples in our Gospel reading today, from John. What is love? What is the love with which Jesus commands us to love one another as he loves us?

Can any of us think of the first time you heard the word “love”? Who spoke this word to you? What did it mean to you? Might it have been when you were a child and your mother or father caressed you and whispered gently, “I love you”? My parents certainly have said this (and meant it) to me, to my sister and brother, and to each other countless times. I would not be here, a priest with and for you, our Church I love, without their love or yours.

But what is love? The range of meanings of “love” makes this question very difficult to answer. We love what brings us pleasure, comfort, or enjoyment: I love going out with friends; good food and drink; dessert (especially if there is chocolate!); sports; fancy clothes or cars, and so on… Some would love it if, during Mass, there were just a few seconds of silence to pray. Some others among us would love Mass to be as fast as possible while remaining reverent. And so liturgy, the work of and for the people, of and for the Church worshipping God, becomes the difficult and yet fruitful labor of love that it is.

In his first encyclical (a letter written to all Catholics of the world), Deus Caritas Est, or God is Love, Pope Benedict XVI speaks of the many meanings of love. “We speak of love of country,” Pope Benedict says, “love of one's profession, love between friends, love of work, love between parents and children, love between family members, love of neighbor, and love of God.” Perhaps the greatest expression of human love, Pope Benedict says beautifully, is the love between a woman and a man in marriage, in which “body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an… irresistible promise of happiness.” In this way, married love is the sacrament; the great image between a woman and a man of God’s own life-giving love for us.

Love can take all these forms, all of which can be good. But what does Jesus say about love? In John’s Gospel we hear Jesus speak highly of love among friends: “I have called you friends.” How do we become friends with Jesus and so friends with one another, if friendship is so great an expression of love? Jesus says to us, “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Love is not an option for us to do when we like; toward those whom we like. Jesus raises love to the level of a commandment: “Love one another.” And how do we love one another most fully? “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jesus sets the standard of laying “down one’s life for one’s friends” by dying on the cross for us. Jesus loves us even when we do not love him; when we have not loved one another, as we hear today from the First Letter of John: “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”

Are we expected somehow to match this love that Jesus has for us? More Christians are killed for their faith than ever before in our Church’s history. And so we remember and we pray for those who, after Jesus, continue to “lay down [their] life for [their] friends”; for their faith. I encourage all of us to support those who work to build peace in troubled regions of our world. But here in these United States, is our chance of martyrdom, of literally laying “down [our] live for [our] friends” not slim? How, then, do we follow in this fullest sense Jesus’ commandment to “love one another as” Christ loves us?

We are not expected to die for our faith. Most of us probably will not become martyrs. But I believe Jesus does ask us to give of ourselves completely to another. Who, then, has acted selflessly toward us? Perhaps we could think of at least one example; one person who has loved us selflessly, in the way I think Jesus asks of us today in John’s Gospel. Maybe this person who loves us selflessly (since on this weekend is Mothers’ Day) is our mother. She is the one whose love has given us life; nurtured us; shown the love of Christ to us in all its depth. Children, especially those of you who will receive your first communion in a few moments: Have not your mothers been so important in bringing you here to this day of welcome to the Table of the Lord for the first time? Now you have a chance; the responsibility, even, to bring the love of Christ you receive for the first time in the Eucharist to our world; to your family and friends; to your schools; to your communities. Show love to your mother in a special way today.

All of us: Whisper to your mothers (and mean it!), “I love you.” If your mother is in heaven with God on this Mothers’ Day, pray to God through her with confidence: “Mom, give me the strength you have; the strength of heaven to love as Christ loves us.” Might we do what our fathers have so often asked us to do: “Ask your mother”? And God will hear the prayers of our mothers in heaven and on earth, the prayer of Mary, Mother of God, for God’s Son Jesus Christ says of our Father in heaven, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name he [will] give you.”

Ask for the strength to love as Christ loves us. Ask for the gifts of generosity and selflessness that we see already at work among us so beautifully. Ask for opportunities for small acts of kindness and follow through on them. Ask in prayer and work for peace in our world; in our country; in our cities and communities. Ask God for the strength to stand up to bullying, to gossip, to any action that destroys human dignity; that tears down the people whom Jesus loves. Ask in prayer; act with the love Jesus gives us, and God will hear our prayer. Ask for healing and consolation for all among us who are sick or dying.  “Whatever you ask the Father in my name he [will] give you… ”

“Love one another as I love you,” Jesus says. “This is my commandment,” certainly not an easy commandment but one that is possible with God’s grace; God’s strength. Jesus does not put before us an impossible commandment. “Love one another as I love you.” Be kind to one another as I am kind to you. Seek out the lost; the sinners; those who are without a friend, just as I have sought you out when you were lost; a sinner; short of friends. Receive me; my strength; my love in the Eucharist and in the other sacraments of the Church. Take this love to the world, and God promises us that we will “bear fruit that will remain.” Include others who would not be included in God’s embrace of love otherwise: The doubting; the troublesome; the disagreeable; those who think differently than we do; people of other cultures and faiths. We have a great example of this kind of inclusive love in our first reading today, from Acts, in which Peter reaches out in love to the house of the pagan Greek Cornelius, who in turn accepts baptism and the gift of the Holy Spirit; a gift borne of God’s love through these early Apostles.

Love, then, is no longer a broad idea or concept but a simple commandment and our joy to live out. Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.” Ask for God’s love in prayer. Act in God’s love. Love with confidence as Christ loves us. This is the selfless love with which Christ gave his life for us, his “friends.” This is the love that saves us; that empowers us now by the gift of God’s Holy Spirit to “bear fruit that will remain” in our world that thirsts for love. This is the love with which God has loved us first. “Love one another,” Jesus says, “as I love you.”