Homily for the week of May 2, 2010

Fifth Sunday of Easter. 2010

Acts 14:21-27

Ps 145:8-9, 10-11, 12-13

Rv 21:1-5a

Jn 13:31-33a, 34-35

Two neighbors had a nasty falling out a number of years ago. One reached out to the other over and over: greeting her whenever they pass one another on the street, calling out to her former friend when she would see her in her yard, attempting time after time to mend the breach. Each effort is ignored, and yet the persistent neighbor tries again and again. In many ways these efforts exemplify the kind of love about which Jesus speaks in today’s Gospel.

Today’s Gospel is Jesus’ last speech to his followers. He focuses it on what it means to love and to be a loving person. Jesus’ command to love one another is part of his explanation to the disciples of his washing their feet. He has modelled for them actions that bespeak love—a love that will even go so far as to surrender life itself for the other. It is a love that is extended even to those who will not reciprocate it. Jesus washed the feet of all the disciples—even Judas, who was about to hand him over to his opponents, and Peter, who was about to deny he ever knew Jesus. The message from the lips of Jesus is short, said while they were all at table for their Last Supper with Jesus, and while he knew that in a short time Judas would betray him. He tells them and he tells us: You are my followers if you love one another. Yesterday Father Terry LaValley of Mooers Forks became the 14th Bishop of Ogdensburg. In his short speech before the end of the ceremony he mentioned that his motto as Bishop would be the words of Jesus to us and to St. Peter: Follow Me.

The followers of Christ had understood love to mean loving your own, looking out for your own. While that was an authentic kind of love, it was not a love that would include all persons. Jesus tells his friends that they must also love Judas, the betrayer. Christians have been told to love one another as Christ loves them. This was a new kind of love, one that had not been known. It was a hard change, and many could not make the change. That is sacrificial love, and it added something new to the nature of love.

Throughout his public life Jesus never gives up on those who opposed him or who did not understand him. He continued to offer them opportunities right to the end. His love could even reach the Roman procurator, Pilate, with whom he engages in lengthy conversation, as he had done with Nicodemus, a Samaritan woman, a man born blind, Martha and Mary. In those instances, there was an openness that eventually resulted in faith. Even though Pilate would ultimately reject Jesus’ love, Jesus nonetheless offers it.

Love is perhaps the easiest yet most difficult human experience about which to write. Poems, songs, plays, paintings, books and movies tells us about love, but never quite say it all just right. Mothers, fathers, friends, strangers all have tried to reveal to us what love means to them and what it would mean to us. But love is probably one of the most over used words in our vocabulary. Unfortunately, for many the words I love you gives permission to do what you want with me. Love often replaces the word like - I like you. Also, for many falling in love has little resemblence to what Jesus talks about in today's Gospel.

Love as Jesus wants us to love does not consist of warm, fuzzy, romantic feelings toward another. To love as Jesus loves, it is not necessary to like or even feel kindly toward the other person. But it is necessary to act toward the other in the way Jesus treated his disciples as he washed their feet.

This kind of love is not affection. This kind of love is not feeling. This kind of love is not reserved for those we find attractive or those who think like us or look like us or act like us. This kind of love is doing. It is being ready always to care for the person who is placed in our path regardless of whether we like or do not like this person. This kind of love is often called charity.

There are thousands of broken homes or families today which would not be broken if there was true love or charity among those who at one time agreed to live together in love. There are thousands in jails and in hospitals of rehabilitation today who would not be there if their families and neighbors fulfilled their obligation of Christian charity. There are many who l have left the practice of their Catholic faith because they did not see true love and charity practiced by their relatives and neighbors and at times those sitting in the same church pews. Each one of us could, with great profit, spend a few moments today looking into ourselves and comparing our thoughts and our words and our actions with the thoughts, words and actions of love which Christ expects from his followers.

It is never too late to mend. Begin today to take a true Christian interest in the spiritual fate of your family and neighbors. Where words have already failed perhaps, try prayer and example. The grace of God will cooperate with your sincere, charitable effort.

But the only thing more difficult than loving is not loving because that path leads to nowhere. Modern medicine has found a cure for nearly all sickness. The only sickness that has no cure is the feeling of being unloved. God pays attention to our love. Not one of us is indispensable. Jesus wants us to fall in love with him and his way of life. If we do we will follow him today and every day.