Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Luc Thuku, OHC
Easter 6 B - Sunday, May 9, 2021
We gather once again to celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to hear him teach us through his word. All three readings today are focusing us on the theme of genuine and sincere love, and its importance in living the life of a follower of Jesus Christ. From the readings we hear that love is not optional but the core, and also the sustaining force for all who call ourselves Christians because as Jesus states clearly, God is Love and we can only be identified as his disciples by our love!
In the first reading that we heard from Acts 10:44-48, we see the continuation of the story of Peter’s vision and obedience to go to the Gentiles which marks a shift, and a significant one at that, in Peter’s ministry, awareness and understanding of what the Christian message is all about. Peter had witnessed the Spirit’s work among the Gentiles in Judea, Galille and Samaria which was passive witnessing but in this passage, he is becoming a witness in the active sense, that is, he is bearing witness to the word and directly through him, the Spirit makes himself/herself manifest as he speaks!
Peter has finally been able to shake the ethnic prejudices that had held him captive, by cooperting with the Holy Spirit who was steadily chiseling away the hardness of his heart towards those “others” that he had been taught to avoid. As soon as Peter removes the barrier that prejudice is and opens himself to love, then the Spirit falls on his hearers as he speaks and this indicates that the Holy Spirit is the true preacher. The Holy Spirit makes the Word of God present through, or perhaps even inspite of, our words! We also see that God is no respector of rubrics, sequence, procedures and practices. Remember until this instance, the outpouring of the Spirit usually followed baptism but this occassion was unlike any other because it marked the breakthrough of the Church towards the Gentiles, who until now were only welcome to the church if they first accepted the Jewish faith. God grants the gift to the gentiles without them having to first convert to the Jewish faith as a confirmation of His love for them just as they are. God clearly manifests that His love is universal and does not depend on any merits on the part of the recipients!
Like Peter, we have been called to a ministry of proclamation and of witness through proximity. It is easier to claim to love from a distance but the real deal happens when we come into contact with those we are supposed to love. This is when our love is tried, stretched and proven.
In the process of our ministry, both our hearers and ourselves receive blessings because God is always at work through the Spirit to tear down ethnic and racial barriers so that God’s very word can be heard. The Word has the power to renegotiate our preconceptions of others and our judgements of them, including the limits we put on ourselves and them about what they can or cannot do. The word has the power to transform and lead us into the proximity of the others whom God loves!
In the second reading today from 1 John 5:1-6, We heard John once again reiterate what he has constantly repeated in his letters; that belief in Jesus and love for one’s brothers and sisters, the believers, cannot be separated! Love is the true mark of being born from God. John here tells us that a true mark of being born from God is believing in Jesus Christ. Anyone who believes in Jesus will love the father who sent him and anyone who loves God, the father of Jesus, will love all God’s other children.
When God created the world, He wanted to communicate and share His love. He later sent His son as the ultimate act of love to the world but it is particularly within the community of the Church, informed by faith and empowered by the Spirit where love can be learned and lived. The love for God therefore does not consist of ecstatic experinces or private feelings only, but of concrete, public and visible obedience. This involves confessing faith in God’s son and by unconditionally loving God’s other children who are everybody living now, and not yet born, as well as loving and caring for our common resources and heritage, the environment. This, however, is not easy and hence the most likely reason that Jesus presented it as a commandment but by Jesus making it a commandment, he did not make it a burden because as we heard in verse 4 of this passage, those who have been born of God through faith have conquered the world; meaning that they will always be victorious despite the hardships and barriers they encounter as long as the will to love is there! Victory is found through faith in what Jesus is and has done and nothing else is needed.
This Easter Season we are being reminded that in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, God’s love for all has been revealed and God’s love has overcome all possible opposition. Victory over the world is a reality made concrete in the community of the church as God overcomes the divisions, animosities, and death that the world promotes, maintains and exploits. Those who believe have overcome the world because their life, love and identity are not determined by the deceptions of the world but by the object of their faith, who is Jesus as the son who was crucified, died and raised to life!
In our Gospel passage from John 15:9-17, We heard the words of Jesus at the last supper handed on to us by the beloved disciple. The language is simple and the style repetitive and it sounds like the theme is moving in circles or better, in spirals. This passage gives the meaning and purpose of human life and a deep Chistian Spirituality or Christian Mysticism for those who prefer that kind of language. One can never come to an end of reading this words of Jesus, meditating on them, wondering at them and even rejoicing in them, for they hold our life and our glory and because they have the secret by which our worth, our value is revealed.
We hear in the passage Jesus exhorting us to abide in His love!… “Remain in my Love” comes the invitation of Jesus! His love is permanent. It is not just a kind of hit and run deal but we should or must remain! Unless we remain, abide, stay a while longer, we will not be able to calm or be still enough to listen and hear as our holy father St. Benedict urges us, with the ear of the heart, to the master’s instructions.
The instruction from the Master this morning is that “as the father has loved me so have I loved you!” How did Jesus experience the love of the father? What did he get as a result of his unfaltering obedience? Well, being in the Easter Season and knowing that what was witnessed by all was death, and not the resurrection which was witnessed or experienced by a chosen few, some may be tempted to think Jesus got nothing! We however know that God the father gave His son Jesus an infinite sense of belonging and of being rooted in His love, a firm foundation, the convinction of His presence, His counsel and His faithfulness in times of extreme trials and tempations. He also gave him peace that exceeded by far the restlessness, hopelessness and emptiness of this world, a sense of safety and security. I don’t know about you my brother and my sister, but I personally could do with a good dose of all that positivity in this world we are living in today!
This is the assurance that Jesus is giving us this morning. That if we abide in his love and as we experience his love, we are beneficiaries of a love that exceeds anything we can think of or imagine, a love that exceeds human understanding, a love that cannot be earned and a love that knows no boundaries of time or space, ethnicity or color, social or economic status.
From our readings today, we hear that God loves us all, each one of us. In a perfect world, we would all love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, and this would instantly ensure that all wars and hate would stop. This is not a perfect world however, but if I, you, and you, and you too, decide this very moment to radically respond to God’s love for us individually, as a community, as a church and as the human race; the only true race that exists…all other classifications being futile attempts to create superficial division, then we can start to make it a perfect world.
This however requires that we put aside our spiteful, angry, selfish, proud, lustful, grasping, vain and foolhardy thoughts and tendencies. We must cultivate humility and purity of heart, which our holy father St.Benedict wisely exhorts in the rule that guides us here at Holy Cross Monastery.
I receive a quote every day from the Website of an organization, called A Network for Grateful Living, founded by Br. David Steindl-Rast OSB, a monk of Mt. Savior, and the word for April 25th this year, was a quote from Lucille Clifton and she had this to say… “In the bigger scheme of things, the universe is not asking us to do something; the universe is asking us to be something. And that is a whole different thing.” In the same vein, as Christians we are not called to love but we are called to be love. This is because the love of Christ demands everything and must cost us everything. Sometimes we are delighted with it and embrace it but then somehow lose sight of it and refuse to go further towards it.
Let us pray to God as we look forward to Pentecost to give us the Spirit of enlightenment so as to know that as our love is called upon, and exercised, and stretched, so is it purified, and deepened, and widened, and strengthened until finally it flows easily, spontaneously and naturally, with all the joys of the Holy Spirit. To reach this stage is the highest conceivable good for us, and no human aspiration can go beyond that. To live according to this is to be perfectly happy! To live without it is to live without the beatitude, for which we were created and for which as Christians and monastics we have been called and set apart for!
Amen
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