Here is my homily for this weekend.
Audio (in two parts): 6th Sunday of Easter – Part One
6th Sunday of Easter – Part Two
Text:
6th Sunday of Easter – Cycle B
May 12/13, 2012
Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1Jn 4: 7-10; Jn 15: 9-17
Love, Forgiveness and Life. To give one of these to someone will require we give all three. If we want to love, we will need to forgive others and embrace life as it is. If we want to forgive, we will need to live by loving as Jesus loved. If we want to live fully, we will need to love and forgive freely.
St. John tells us today in the 2nd reading that to love is to expiate sin – to forgive, and our Lord tells us in the Gospel that if we are to have life – life as his friends, life in its fullness, we must give that life away, give it to another; we must even love at times to the point of death.
We, who have first been loved, forgiven and gifted with life by God, must now give it all away to others if we are to have eternal life with God in heaven. We must let go of what we have been given in order to find it again.
We cannot love it we do not forgive. We cannot forgive if we do not put our needs aside so that someone else may live. We cannot live if we do not forgive from the heart and in that way love one another.
Now, who in your life has loved you in that way? Forgiven you over and over again? Who has given you life? Who has come closest to God in loving you, forgiving you and giving you life? Whose day is it today? Yes, for most of us (though certainly not all) it has been our mothers who have most clearly loved us, forgiven us, and gifted us with life. That is why Pope John Paul I, Papa Luciani as we called him during his papacy in 1978, described God’s love as a mother’s love for her children. His comment caused quite a stir back then, but his point was clear: God is our Father, but the love of a mother for her children is often the closest earthly reflection of God’s love for us will we ever find. It is a love that is pure, enduring and total.
We must never forget our mothers’ love. We must never forget our moms, who they are, where they are, what they have done for us. We must honor them every day, not just on Mother’s Day.
Thank you to all of you out there who are mothers, and for the most noble of all vocations in life, and for living out your vocation so well.
As I was taught in diaconate formation, when I preach I must try to preach to the entire assembly, not just a segment of it and I suspect that some of you were not fortunate to have experienced the love of a mother during your childhood. Your mother may have died when you were young. Your mother may have been physically or mentally ill and unable to love and forgive. If this is true, these are wounds that run deep and can be renewed on days like today when we honor our moms.
My father’s mom died when he was but three years old. I listen to my patients at Gundersen and hear many stories of people who believe their mothers never loved them or forgave them for something.
If for some reason these things have been true in your life, then today is a special day you, a day in which you are left with an opportunity to forgive and love and give new life to your mother.
I watched a movie a few weeks ago. I know several of you saw it also because as I was waiting for the 7 o’clock show, a half-dozen or more of you were exiting the 4:50 showing. The movie was entitled October Baby, a remarkably well-done film that depicted a young woman, Hannah, who learns that her premature birth and subsequent medical problems were due to her being an abortion survivor. Her mother had attempted to abort her and her twin brother, and although her brother died, she survived. She was quickly adopted by another couple who loved her and sustained her life. In this movie, you see played out the beauty of the gift of life, the tremendous power of forgiveness, and the enduring influence of love. Hannah came to see that her life had value. It was a life she could embrace, not reject, and that with her life she could choose to forgive. She came to realize that in embracing her life and in forgiving her mother she could love as God would love.
Jesus has shown us that the greatest act of love possible is the willingness to forgive one another to the point of death, forgiving so that others might live. That is what his life was all about: loving us so completely, forgiving us so totally, that we would have life which endures for eternity.
Do we really want to have such life, and have it to the full? Then let us forgive each other; let us forgive from the heart. This is not easy. It can be the work of a lifetime. Sometimes we forgive in increments, little by little, given our human frailties, but forgive we must! This will be a test of our character. It will require the development of virtue. It will grow with practice, but practice we must! Everyday!
Do we really want to forgive from the heart? If we do, let us embrace life as it unfolds before us, with all its imperfections and uncertainties. Have you ever thought of that: To really forgive, we must embrace life, not reject it? Those who refuse to at least try to forgive reject life; they reject their history; they reject the people who come into their lives. To embrace life requires great courage, great faith. Talk to couples who practice Natural Family Planning and you will see that courage and that faith, that openness to human life. If we embrace life, then God can work his will in us by freeing us to love.
Hannah, in the movie October Baby, discovered that to truly love and be loved, she had to embrace her life as it had unfolded, as it was given her, with all its tragedy, imperfections and limitations. She couldn’t reject those who had been put into her life. She couldn’t reject them; she could forgive them and love them. Her love consisted in offering forgiveness. In loving and forgiving in this way, she embraced the life, she embraced it fully.
Her story is a reflection of the life of Jesus, who commanded us to love in this way.
