Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Easter

Pastoral Visit to the Dominican Sisters

May 5, 2024
Blessed Imelda Convent
Fort Worth, Texas

Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
Psalm 98: 1, 2-3, 3-4
I John 4:7-10
John 15:9-17

The readings that the Church offers us in today’s liturgy center on authentic love and friendship. It is unconditional love that is the way that “the Lord has revealed to the nations His saving power” as we prayed in the 98^th Psalm as our responsorial psalm. In our second reading and our Gospel for today’s liturgy the word love appears eighteen times. The type of love that is mentioned is known as agape or charity. It is not mere human love or affection. It is stronger than marital or familial love. It is the type of love that only God can instill because it is the very life of the Holy Trinity. It is this type of love that the Incarnation of Christ makes a capacity of human love and that which the Holy Spirit imbues in us as the theological virtue of charity at our Baptism and Confirmation.

Our second reading is a passage from the first Letter of John that encourages us to love one another because it is only love that unites us all with God. Saint John goes on to tell us that love consists not in any activity initiated on our part, but in the truth that God first loves us. This love consists in the gift of His Son who brings us forgiveness of our sins by the shedding of His Blood. God is the primary agent in love, and we are the recipients. Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “It was not you who chose me but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.”

How do we exactly do this? During his instructions to the Apostles at the Last Supper, Jesus taught how His love reflects that of the Father, and how we must continue to live in and make concrete that love in our lives. The authentic sign of this love is giving up one’s life for one’s friends not to become a slave, but a friend. We understand what a friend is by contrasting it with a slave. The difference is not in obedience since friends listen to and follow the wishes of their friends as slaves do of their masters. But slaves do not know their masters’ intentions, motivations, or character, while friends know and understand their friends. “Slaves” would be bought and valued only by what they did or by how much they produced, “friends” are chosen and valued for their being themselves. Jesus hides nothing from us, His friends. His motivation is that all be saved and become His friends. His clarity of friendship can only confuse us when we are steeped in the shadows of selfishness and sin and remain uncontrite and indifferent.

Jesus made Himself known to His disciples through His friendship, miracles, parables, teachings, conversation, and in the breaking of the Bread. Jesus chose and designated His disciples to continue His work of love. The love that Jesus reveals may sound simple, but it is impossible to live without Grace because it is a share in the Cross offered us through Grace. To love as Jesus loves others always requires sacrifice. True charity places demands on us.

In our ministry today in the contemporary world, we are faced with people who appear to be lost in narcissism and hedonism, confusing these with love. These dispositions drive people to become jealous, conceited, and resentful, precisely the qualities that Saint Paul excludes from love in the famous passage from his first Epistle to the Corinthians.

Saint Dominic, your holy founder, confronted similar spiritual maladies in the Albigensian heretics of his day and he prescribed the strategy that enables us to carry out the command of Jesus to love one another as He has loved us. Saint Dominic said, “Heretics are to be converted by an example of humility and other virtues far more readily than by any external display or verbal battles. So let us arm ourselves with devout prayers and set off showing signs of genuine humility and go barefooted to combat Goliath.” Our mission requires love and kindness.

Jesus commands us, His friends, to trust Him as a friend and to enter the mystery of His love, and to accept the difficult and thankless task of making this love a reality in the lives of others: to love those who do not love us. It is for the sake of God’s glory that we are commanded to love those who do not love God because God does love them. We will never fully understand the mystery of God’s love in our lives until we experience the fullness of love in eternal life in the Beatific Vision as St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrated through the special grace he received from Jesus on the Crucifix. For now, it is not for us to analyze God’s love, but rather that we accept it gratefully and joyfully return it to Him through the persons He brings into our lives every day.