6th Sunday of Easter 2024

Jesus emphasizes the importance of loving Him and others with the same love that He loves us. Our friendship with God is conditional on our obedience to His commandments. Love is about willing the good of others, even at our own expense. Love and truth should always go together, and we should be wary of counterfeits in the world. Love does not lead others into sin but rejoices in the truth. We can show love to others through prayer and by leading them to the truth of God's love. Jesus chose us to bear fruit that will remain, ultimately for the salvation of souls. Living in this way can be challenging, but with God's grace, it is possible. All things work for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. of our faith. Jesus speaks about how important it is that we love him, that we love others, with the love that he loves us with. And so I'd like to just kind of focus on three different sections that are in the gospel for tonight. So Jesus says, as the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments, and remain in his love. So this is, again, always important for us to remind ourselves of, because we can be forgetful at times, or not always live out of this reality, but God loves us, right? He loves us, he loves us, he loves us. So we never want to forget that, because there are times where we might feel unworthy of God's love, or if we've committed serious sin, we might feel like we have to do something to earn God's love. No, we just have to go back to confession and repent. God's love is always there for us. It is unconditional. However, our friendship with God is conditional, because Jesus says that if we keep his commandments, we will remain in his love. So the love's always there, but whether or not we're experiencing it, whether or not we're in it, depends on if we're following God's commandments or not. So God's love for us is unconditional, but our friendship, our remaining in that love, is conditional, because that's based on our response, or our lack of response, to that love that God constantly has towards us. For any true friendship, any real relationship to exist, we have to have intimacy, we have to disclose our heart to the other. So Jesus has done that himself by revealing the Father to us. And so, do I do that with him? Do I open my heart to Jesus as a friend? Do I have that level of intimacy with him? So Jesus tells us that we are his friends if we do what he commands. And his command is to love others, to desire others' good. And that determines whether or not we remain in his love, or we're separated from his love. So the commandments that he has are for our good, they help complete, they make us complete our joy. That's why God gives them to us. Jesus then goes on to say that no one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. So he's starting to describe the quality of love, the kind of love that he has for us. So again, this is at the Last Supper, so this is Holy Thursday, so this is on the night before Jesus is going to offer his life for his friends, and for all of us. And that's the greatest kind of love that we can have for someone else, to lay down our life for another. And it's important that we have a proper understanding of what love is, from a Christian perspective. Love is, again, willing the good of the other, even at my own expense, even when it costs me something, and sometimes even to the point of death, right? The martyrs are great examples of that. When they are called to make a choice, ultimately, between their lives and between Jesus, they make the choice for Jesus. So I have to, to truly love, I have to will the good of the other, even at my own expense. Closely related to that, love can never be divorced from the truth. True love is true, it conforms to the truth of who God is, of his commandments, how he's revealed to us that he's called us to live. Pope Benedict XVI wrote an encyclical called Love and Truth, or Caritas and Veritate, so living the truth in love, and in the opening of that document he says this, Love is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace. It is a force that has its origin in God, eternal love, and absolute truth. Each person finds his good by adherence to God's plan for him. In order to realize it fully, in this plan he finds his truth, and through adherence to this truth, he becomes free. To defend the truth, to articulate it with humility and conviction, and to bear witness to it in life, are therefore exacting and indispensable forms of charity. So what Pope Benedict is saying there is that the two have to go together, where you can't divorce truth from love or love from truth. They always have to be united. So to love someone means that I have to love them with the love that God has for them, and that is faithful to God's truth, to his commandments, and that's what again leads us to true fulfillment, true happiness. It's important for us to have that very, very clear in our minds and in our hearts, because there are a lot of counterfeits in the world and in our society today to true love. Perhaps we've heard some version of these kinds of sayings. Just do what makes you happy. Be true to yourself. Follow your heart. Well, sometimes it might make for a nice greeting card, but it's terrible spiritual advice. I don't want to be true to myself. I don't want to follow my heart, especially if my heart isn't aligned to God. I want to follow God's heart. I want to follow his truth. I don't get to make up my own truth, and if I try to, it ultimately leads me down the path of misery. So I want to be true to God. And how do I do that correctly? How do I lay down my life for someone in God's truth? Well, again, we can literally do that, as the martyrs have done. Probably most of us won't be called for that, but that's always something to be aware of, that that's the point that love will bring us to, is to be willing to die out of love for God or others. But there's a million different small ways we can do that each and every day. We can lovingly call someone out of sin. We can lovingly bring someone the hope and peace of the gospel if they're feeling abandoned, if they're feeling like there's no hope for them. And you can think about things that love will never do. So love will never lead someone into sin. So if I truly love someone, if I want their good, I'm never going to lead them into sin. I'm never going to justify sin. I'm never going to give approval to sin. And there is a lot of that in the world today, right? Even if it's not us doing it ourselves, there's a lot of temptation to just go along with sin, to justify it, make it seem like it's not that big a deal, or to just tolerate it. Well, in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 6, that's in that great hymn to love that's read often at weddings, where St. Paul is describing all the things that love does and what love doesn't do. And he says, love does not rejoice over wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It does not rejoice over wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. So again, when it comes to sin, I can never justify it, lead someone into it, or give approval to it, because love doesn't do that. It rejoices rather with the truth. So I can live that kind of love with those that God has placed in my life, by always having that direction of my heart, my attitude towards them, to lead them into the truth of God's love, especially if I see them going astray. I can also do this with God. Obviously, God is all truth and all love, but I can lay down my life for the Lord by, in small ways, being faithful to daily prayer. That is a very practical way in which I lay down my life, I give part of my life to God through the time that he has given to me. I sacrifice that time back to God in prayer, opening myself up to his love, his mercy, and his grace. And God offers himself to me, and there's that beautiful exchange, that intimacy of two hearts. Jesus then goes on to say, it was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give you. This I command you, love one another. And so, my brothers and sisters, this last point, it's, this is kind of, you know, the practical, okay, where's all this leading to? If I live my life in this way, especially when it's difficult, if I'm living the truth and love, especially in a world and a society that is opposed to that, if I have to stand up to family or friends sometimes, it's difficult, that's hard, it might feel impossible, it's not, God gives us the grace to do it, but what's the whole point of that? Well, it's this, so there will be fruit that will remain. So it's good to remind ourselves from time to time of our own mortality, of our death, the end of our lives, because it helps us to pay attention to what really matters. And what really matters ultimately is going to heaven, for myself, for those that God has placed in my life, because that is the fruit that will remain. Our souls, our immortal souls, and the souls of others, that is what will last from this life into the next. After all the countries, power, money, empires, and the world itself, after all that has gone away, then what will remain is you and I for all of eternity. And so that's why we are called to live in this way, because our souls and the souls of others are at stake. And if we live faithful to God's love and to his truth, we can trust that God is going to use us, use our lives, to bring people to heaven who maybe otherwise wouldn't go. And that there's nothing greater that you or I can do with our lives than to help someone else get to heaven. In fact, it's a promise from Jesus, Jesus promised in last week's gospel that if we remain in him like a vine, like the branches remain on the vine, that we will bear much fruit. And here he goes deeper into that, and that fruit will remain, it will last for all of eternity. So again, it can be difficult and challenging to live in this way, especially in our day and age when there are those so many false forms of love and temptation that call out to us, but again, it's possible with God's grace if we stay in that union of love with him. In Romans 8, 28, Paul says that we know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. This should be an incredibly encouraging verse for us, that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. But if I remain faithful to the Lord, if I love him above all else, that when I stand up for what I know is right, for the truth, for the truths of my faith, and I love others with the love that God has loved me with, then no matter what happens in this life, God will work that out for my good, either in this life, or in the next, or in both. And I can trust that God is true to his promises. And so my brothers and sisters, as we approach Jesus in the Eucharist this evening, let's ask him for an increase in love for him and for others, and for the grace to remain in him and in the truth of his commandments.