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Exploring the word

10 May 2015 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B

Today is Mother’s Day. An appropriate day to consider the ultimate possibilities of love. Through the centuries, women take the risk of love to bring children into the world. Often in terrible circumstances, under difficult, lonely, economically strained conditions. Women became mothers at the risk of their lives in times past and still in many parts of the world where medical care is sketchy or non-existent. And once the children are born, good mothers continue to put the welfare of their children above their own need for rest, for recreation, for all they might have had without the burden of care for dependent lives. Whether they stay at home with their children or must work outside to provide their care, mothers remain the primary paradigm of constancy in our world. Even mothers who neglect or deny their children prove the paradigm because we expect them to do otherwise. A mother’s love is mythic. If we got it from our mothers it needs no explanation; if we didn’t get it, we may spend our lives looking for it or suffering its lack. Father-love, of course, can be equally heroic and is certainly as mythic, if in distinct ways. Psychologists have only begun to explore how we need our parents, and how we seek to supply parent figures if one or another was absent or inadequate. The happy adult will originally have had, or restored for themselves through mentors, the mythic sources of love and constancy we seem to require at the root of ourselves. And maybe this isn’t so strange, since God is love, and we are God’s children. Love is literally at the root of our identity. We seem to know this and need it as much as air and food and shelter. We’re made from love, and for happiness, according to the most basic catechisms. Unless and until we discover this love for ourselves, we won’t really be happy. Like Augustine said, we’re restless until we rest in ultimate love. So Jesus tells us: Remain in me, as I remain in my Father. How do we find our way to this kind of love, especially if we didn’t experience it originally or lost it along the way? Jesus points us to the one unshakeable command of his Kingdom: Love one another as I love you. It’s no good to lament that we didn’t get the love we needed or don’t get it now if we’re unwilling to give it to those who need it from us. Jesus doesn’t invite us to love each other. He doesn’t recommend that we do. He doesn’t think it’s a good idea. He commands it. Love is an imperative, because the fulfillment of life is impossible without it. Related scripture links Kingdom paradox: Matt. 5:3-11; 11:4-5; 18:4; 19:30; Mark 9:35; Luke 6:20-26; 9:48; 1 Cor. 15:42-44; 2 Cor. 12:9-10 Eye of the needle: Matt. 19:24; Mark 10:25 Travel light: Matt. 10:9-10; Luke 9:3; 10: 4

Authors Alice Camille

Love Mother

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The inner word

10 May 2015 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B

Scripture’s powerful messages about love offer a number of opportunities for reflection. God loved you first. Where do you see God’s love in your life? Love reveals God. What does faith teach you about love? The love of God goes out to all. How do you decide whom and whom not to love?

Love

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In other words

10 May 2015 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B

"I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love. “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. You are my friends when you do the things I command you. I’m no longer calling you servants because servants don’t understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I’ve named you friends because I’ve let you in on everything I’ve heard from the Father. “You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you, and put you in the world to bear fruit, fruit that won’t spoil. As fruit bearers, whatever you ask the Father in relation to me, he gives you. But remember the root command: Love one another” (from John 15). Taken from The Message: Catholic/Ecumenical Edition by Eugene Peterson (ACTA Publications, 2014 ); actapublications.com.

father Love

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Homily stories

10 May 2015 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B

Collecting stuff did not mean a lot to my mother. She easily was able to downsize her possessions when she moved herself into a retirement complex at age 80. Once she started, she never looked back. She took great delight in giving away trinkets, jewelry, statues, curios—and the stories that went with them. After her funeral as we emptied her apartment, my brothers and I remarked how few mementos she had hung onto over the years. So I was surprised when I came across a box of cards and letters we had written to her when we were children. There was one from me from around first grade. A simple red Crayola heart enclosed the words “I love you mom.” I signed my name in pencil smudging some of the letters. The fact that she had saved it brought a tear to my eyes. On this Mother’s Day the scriptures remind us that God is loving and calls us to love in the same way. God’s love comes to us through Jesus. Like a mother’s love it conquers even death itself. And nothing we possess, not even the most precious memento, can come close in value.

Authors Father Dominic Grassi

Love Mother

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Homily themes

10 May 2015 - Sixth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B

Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. To know someone is to love them, the old saying goes, but as scripture points out in so many words, the reverse is also true: To love is to know. In love God is revealed, the First Letter of John says—in fact God is revealed to be love, especially in God’s Son, who in turn loves his “friends” who believe in him. With all this love given out, however, comes a command: to love. Love reveals who knows God and who does not. What does that love look like? How can you “know”? It is a sacrificial love. “No one has greater love than this,” Jesus says, “to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”—a love, as Saint Peter learned, that also “shows no partiality.”

Love

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Homily stories

03 May 2015 - Fifth Sunday of Easter, Cycle B

The television show Mad Men reminds me of my grandfather, who was about the same age as the main character in this award-winning TV show. Not that my grandpa had an exciting career in advertising or, worse yet, slippery morals—far from it—but he was steely and stoic in a way that people of that generation seemed to be. Maybe living through the adversity of the 1920s Depression and serving in a devastating war in the 1940s made him that way, or maybe social norms simply dictated a certain reserve. Regardless, like many of his peers, people knew how my grandfather felt because of what he did, not because of what he said. Among the many ways my grandfather showed his love was by taking his children and grandchildren on camping and fishing adventures, carving toy boxes and doll furniture by hand for disadvantaged kids at his church, and cultivating a truly magnificent rose garden for his wife’s enjoyment. Just as Saint Paul advised, my grandfather, a man of few words, lived in deed and truth. May we all find a way to do the same.

Authors Jennifer Tomshack

Love

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Quotes

01 Feb 2015 - Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

The first duty of love is to listen. —Paul Tillich (1886-1965) To believe in the relevance of God is to believe in the presence of prophets among us who show the relevance of his Word. To believe in the faithfulness of God and in his church is to believe that he will not let it fall asleep, be overwhelmed, lose its vigor and the dynamism of its hope. –Jésus-Maria Asurmendi

Love listening

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Sign & sacrament

26 Oct 2014 - Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Many people enshrine mottoes or slogans, often quoted from great women or men who seem to distill the very essence of what it means to lead a good life. The heart of Jesus’ famous answer about the “greatest commandment” would have been familiar to any of his contemporaries: “Love God” and “love your neighbor.” But Jesus’ genius and his challenge were to make them equivalent. Saint John reiterates Jesus’ Great Commandment by bluntly saying that if one claims to be a lover of God without loving one’s neighbor, one is simply a liar. From Jesus’ perspective, it just can’t be done.

Commandments loves

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Homily themes

26 Oct 2014 - Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Most of us know what Christian living entails—sort of. Isn’t it about obeying the Commandments? Answer: yes and no. The central requirement of the Christian lifestyle is about love—not behavior, which is derivative. Jesus teaches us that we should live with love at the center of our lives. That is the best witness we can offer to the world, too.

Love Commandments

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