VI Sunday Easter, Cycle B

(Mother's Day)

Acts 10:25-26, 34,35, 44-48
Ps98:1, 2-3, 3-4
1 Jn 4:7-10
Jn 15:9-17

Today’s Gospel is certainly one of my most favorite passages of our Lord because He simply lays it all out: This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. I like to make it a point to say that the most important word in that sentence is “as”.   It’s a comparative word; it signifies that there is a standard to love.  That love is not a subjective thing, but an objective thing; that I am to love not as I think I should love but as the Lord has loved me.  And by that standard… He loved me to death.

There are only a few people in my life that would do that for me.  And I know for all you mother’s out there – what wouldn't you do for your children?  That part of you that is willing to *literally* sacrifice your body for your children is naturally built into your feminine nature.  Mothers don’t really think about it and at times it is taken for granted.  And this is where it starts to really hurt.  From the moment of conception, the child in you depends on you, knows that you love them and returns that love in countless ways.  But as they grow up and become independent in their own person, the love you give them in your words and actions aren't reciprocated; the love doesn't come back.  And sometimes, it’s outright rejected.  And so mothers know about rejection and hurt all too well.  But this is where it’s pretty much true, not just for mothers, but for everyone…. Love that is given out but doesn't come back hurts a lot.  If love is supposed to be unconditional, then why does it hurt so much when it doesn't come back? I think the answer is that true love is supposed to hurt – it naturally hurts, but when it doesn't return it hurts even more. Why?

 The definition of Love is to “will the good for another” and the highest good that you can will is yourself.  And so the highest form of love is the gift of yourself.  And if you give yourself to another in love, to know them and to be known by them, then in a sense, you've lost a part of yourself.  But when love comes back, it fills that part of you that is given out and so you feel whole again. The more perfect the love, the more feeling of completeness and wholeness. 

Then what about Jesus?  How is Jesus able to give Himself completely over to sinners like us infinitely and perfectly – suffering torture, ridicule, rejection, and blasphemy?!  He’s given His whole entire life over – and so His pain is not only physically great, but I would argue: the emotional pain alone would be enough to kill Him and for Him to die of a broken heart.  According to this definition of love, of giving His whole self, and how is able face all of that on the Cross?  It doesn't add up.  

Something is missing… and this is the key not only for Christ but for us to endure this rejection.  As the Father love me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. When Christ gives Himself to us for the sake of our sins, He never ever loses sight of the Father’s abiding love.  This is the source of all consolation – the love that should never be sacrificed or given away: the Love of the Father: remaining in His love.  We are able to endure rejection, ridicule, and hatred because our hearts are never really given away but found in the abiding love of God.  If you don’t have that in your heart, if you don’t have His Love, His Peace, and Consolation in your heart – you will never ever be able to love one another as He has loved us. Through Him, with Him and in Him – is the only way to love and if you aren’t doing it that way, then you can expect to be hurt and wounded. And this won’t change until you turn back to Him for healing. 

Our love is imperfect and that’s why forgiveness is such an important part to love. If you find it difficult to forgive, especially your loved ones; if you find it difficult to release those grudges, those resentments, and offenses then you aren't *loving* in the right way. You need to go back to God because you cannot will forgiveness any more than you can will the night to be day. Forgiveness, true forgiveness starts in the deep recesses of the heart at the wound.  And in that wound, in that hurt, to allow the Lord God to come into it and pour His Love and Truth into it and heal it.  The hole in your heart is leaking and hemorrhaging and until it is healed, you will never have a strong enough heart to forgive. So take to heart these words: turn to God and ask for God to go to your heart and bring healing there. Only after you feel whole there, then you will be able to forgive.  

Remember that it is not we who chose Him, but He who chose us. He is the first mover, the first lover. And so our action is not the initiative but a response to His invitation to Love by His standard and not by our own.  

Today I picked a heavy topic for Mother’s Day and I wish that things could be lighter.  But all of you, especially you Mothers have at one time in your life experienced loss, experienced hurt and rejection at the hands of someone you have loved. However great or small that hurt was, it was a hurt and it’s important to recognize it because it was not meant to be like that. Although I am not a mother, I do know what loss and rejection feels like; I do know what it feels like to have a broken heart, after all I am a human being. What I offer all of you today is an invitation to find healing and reconciliation in God and by His standard of Love.  Because I know what the Love of the Father feels like, I have experienced it and in it I have experienced the power to forgive, to release, and to find and feel true freedom in Him.  And I only feel like I should share this with all of you, to share with you this great hope and joy in our Lord and Savior.  “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. "

 

Maundy Thursday

Ex 12:1-8, 11-14
Ps 116:12-13, 15-16bc,17-18
1 Cor 11:23-26
Jn 13:1-15

Isn’t it interesting that the less time we have on earth, the more we try to live on forever?  The threat of something or someone going away only makes you want it more; because once it is gone it is gone forever.  If you had only a few hours left with your closest friends and loved ones, what would you say or do?  Of course we would want to try to do something that would be remembered forever.  Usually people remember famous last words, not famous first words.  People’s last words are usually a summation of their entire life, all that defines them: in a pithy little sentence or phrase – their finiteness stretches to infinity with their parting words.

The very foundation of our faith, the focal point of our Christian life is centered on what Christ did this very night.  It is the night in history that lives on for eternity – a night that is different than any other night.  Tonight we celebrate now what had happened 2000 years ago, what continues to happen and what will continue to happen forever.  When our Lord celebrated His last meal with His closest friends, He brought about three things that radically transformed our relationship with Him: the priesthood, the Eucharist, and the new Commandment.  Tonight He brings His twelve disciples into a unique relationship with Himself. He offers His very self to His disciples in the Passover Sacrifice - Holy Eucharist, and thereby institutes a new priesthood in His example – simple ordinary men ordained into the High Priesthood of Jesus Christ.

In our Lord’s instruction, the Eucharist and the Priesthood are tied intimately together – one cannot be without the other. When Christ said, Do this in memory of me, He instituted the priesthood and the Holy Eucharist.  This seemingly simple meal that He shared with His closest confreres makes the all bloody sacrifices of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Passover, and ultimately Himself into the new unbloody sacrifice of the Mass. In our celebration of the Eucharist, we join in the sacrifice of Christ, a fragrant offering to the Father.  What we partake in tonight is His Body, His Blood.  The Holy Mass is not a show or a re-enactment that is performed and we are simply watching bystanders.  Tonight takes us back to the small upper room in Jerusalem. You don’t need to imagine it, you are already there when He says, Take this and eat of it.  Take this and drink of it.

In the same way, it takes Jesus Christ Himself to say those words to make the ordinary substances of bread and wine to become His extraordinary flesh and blood.  The authority for any priest to do this comes from the unbroken succession of the Apostles. No ordinary man does this on his own; but he must be ordained to do so by one who has the authority.  The power does not come from himself, but from Jesus Christ.  Therefore the priest is truly Jesus Christ in the celebration of Mass.  He is at one time merely a human collaborator and also in the person of Jesus Christ.  The priest is at the time a sinner needing forgiveness and one to absolve and forgive others’ sins.  The priest is to be holy beyond reproach and yet understands that he can do nothing without the help of God.  When a priest celebrates the Mass he assumes an incredible position between God and man through Jesus Christ in the Eucharist; he is a servant, a victim, and intercessor for all his faithful both here living and dead.  St. John Vianney writes this about a priest during the celebration of the Eucharist:

O Holy and Eternal Father, let us make an exchange. Thou hast the soul of my friend who is in Purgatory, and I have the Body of Thy Son, Who is in my hands; well, do Thou deliver my friend, and I offer Thee Thy Son, with all the merits of His Death and Passion.

The priesthood and the Eucharist cannot be separated.  Christ intended that these two sacraments be carried on and handed on to new generations.  “No priest, No Eucharist. No Eucharist, No priest.”  And tonight we remember the institution of the priesthood and the Eucharist.  But that is not all... for what comes out even more front and center to all of this is not to just stayed glued in our pews in Church, but to GO OUT into the world.

But why is tonight nicknamed Maundy Thursday and not Priesthood or Eucharist Thursday?  Aren’t those the more important things?  Let us not forget our Lord’s words: Greater love has no man than this, that to lay down one’s life for his friends.  The Maundy is an English adaptation of the Latin word Mandatum, which means “commandment” and is from tonight’s Gospel: I give you a new commandment to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do... Love one another. What is part and parcel to the establishment of the Eucharist and the Priesthood is the establishment of heart of sacrifice and worship: Love, Charity. And that’s why we call today Maundy Thursday. By fulfilling the Ten Commandments, Our Lord reiterates the commandment to love one another as I have loved you in the last moments of His life by washing the feet of His disciples. In all His acts that would be remembered, it is Love that is the bedrock; the foundation of all things that Christ has done.  Christ became man out of love for us.  Christ healed us, preached to us, shares Himself with us out of love for us, and finally He died out of love for us.

Ten years ago my pastor, a Franciscan priest who had served in the Vatican for decades, was going to wash the feet for the first time in his life.  When asked why, he said that in the Vatican, there was always a monsignor or bishop that trumped him.  At 70 some odd years old, this was the first time he had been a pastor.  As he stooped down in front of me to wash my feet, I was incredibly moved to tears because I thought to myself, “How am I worthy for this?  A priest’s hands are sacred and holy – they hold the Body and Blood of Christ, they are anointed with sacred chrism and they anoint others, they are the hands that bless and absolve sins. And now, they are touching my ugly and dirty calloused feet.”  If Jesus, whose hands were pierced by nails with blood flowing out washed the feet of His followers, surely a priest of Jesus must do the same.  If this action humbles the priest to service, I am sure the people whose feet are washed are even more moved to humility: love and truth are one.  And in turn, they know that the only way to respond is to perpetuate that love shown to them and bring it to others.  Therefore, the “commandment to love” is not an obligation or mandate by force – it the very LOVE of Christ that impels us to service; one is to Loved into service.

The Eucharist is food, spiritual food, and we are spiritually fed.  However, it is not just for ourselves, but to bring others to Christ and Christ to others through charity and service.  What good is it just to receive Christ by our mouths and not carry out the work of charity in our hands?  Christ gives us the model to follow; otherwise we would be greedy and selfish, hoarding God’s gifts to ourselves.

The Eucharist is our sacramental and spiritual connection with Christ and the Commandment to love one another demonstrated in the washing of the feet is our physical connection with Christ.  Tonight we not only see a priest do what Christ commanded his disciples to do at the Last Supper and thereby instituting the Eucharist, we also see how the priest – in the person of Christ – washes the feet of his disciples to show how we are to love one another.  Both the Eucharist and Charity are intimately united and is the reason why Christ came. God is love; His love is the gift of Himself completely and totally.  He gives Himself physically and spiritually and what has been given to us, we must give to one another until the end of time.  I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.  I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.