6th Sunday of Easter
(Sunday 6th May 2018)
How much have we loved – (John 15:9-17)
Saint John’s Gospel this weekend is about love. The word love has different meanings. The Greek word Eros means the love a husband has for his wife and visa versa. Philo means the love good friends have for each other. And Agape is love which is self sacrificing and unselfish, a total giving of oneself to the other without expecting anything in return.
God can be summed up in one word and that word is love. God is love. God is Triune or three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father totally loves His Son and shares His love with Him which Jesus receives. And Jesus totally loves His Father and shares His love back, which His Father also receives. And this total selfless love of giving and receiving is the Holy Spirit.
God’s Triune love is perfect and eternal but God chose to share His love and so He created you and me and everything we need. Not only did He create us but then He came into the world as man, like one of us, to save us and redeem us, so that we could live with Him forever in eternity. He did this by His total self giving life He lived here on earth and ultimately giving up His life for us on the Cross on Good Friday. This is the Agape love that is self sacrificing and unselfish. A total giving of oneself to the other without expecting anything in return. It is the greatest love, or as Jesus says in the Gospel, ‘A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends‘. This is the love with which God loves each and everyone of us with, with no conditions or boundaries or limits.
One of God’s greatest gifts to us is our friendship with Jesus, truly present in the tabernacles of the churches to which we go. Jesus is always there as One in whom we can confide in and from whom we can be assured of understanding and strength in the trials that come our way in life. Our friendship with God is reflected in our friendship with each other, as it is something we cannot receive unless we are prepared to share it. Our love for our neighbour is the real test of our love for God. To be able to forgive not seven times but seventy seven times. To give without wishing to receive, the kind word, the smile, the listening ear, the phone call or email or text or letter. To visit the sick person or the housebound person or the homeless person or the imprisoned person or the grieving person, the person who needs our visit. In bringing God to our neighbour we are living the Gospel message. Jesus says ‘You did not choose me, no, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and bear fruit, fruit that will last’. Saint John of the Cross said ‘In the evening of life we shall be judged on how much we have loved‘.
Fr. Noel Weir