4th Sunday of Easter, Cycle C
Acts 13:14, 43-52; Rev 7:9, 14b-17; John 10:27-30
May 10-11, 2025
“I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand.” (John 10:28)
God alone is the author of life. He alone sustains it into eternity. Once God gives us life, He never takes it back. Rather, He is faithful to the person to whom He gives this most precious gift, and He is faithful to the gift itself. He sustains the gift of life in each of us, and He requires us to protect human life from its conception to its natural end. Life is a gift, a gift to be enjoyed with God now and in eternity, and in gratitude to Him who has given it. Yes, we are to live in gratitude to God for the life we now directly experience in this world and will experience anew for all eternity after we pass through the doors of death. We must live in gratitude.
When I had my psychotherapy practice at Gundersen, and now in the spiritual direction to men in formation, I recognized over and over again that a sign of mental and spiritual health was living in gratitude.
Are we grateful for the life we have been given? I hope so.
God chose a woman, the ever virgin Mary, to be the Mother of God, the mother of Jesus who is the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Just as God chose Mary to be the one through whom Word of Life would be given to the world, so too God chose our mothers to be the ones through whom life would offered to each of us. Just as Mary said “yes” to God through the invitation of the Archangel Gabriel, so too our mothers said “yes” to God when they were told that they were to bear a child into this world, a child who would be given eternal life by grace and the will of God Himself. Just as we should be grateful to our Blessed Mother for having said “yes” to the angel, so too we need be grateful to our mothers for their “yes” to God on our behalf.
My mother taught me the sacredness of my life. You have probably heard me say this before, but she taught me that God always has my life in His hands – like we heard in our Gospel today. He always is sustaining that gift of life, every second of every day, conceiving me over and over again, willing me to live every second. Should He ever stop willing the life He gave me, through my mother, I would cease to exist, but His eternal promise is that He will never abandon me or leave me an orphan. God does the same with you. Through your mother, He gave you life and now sustains the life you have been given.
How grateful we need to be to God and to our mothers!
There is a great temptation in our world today to take life rather than sustain it. There is a great temptation in our world today destroy life rather than live in gratitude for it. We see this in so many obvious ways like abortion and euthanasia, but we see it also in the ways we undermine the sanctity of mothers and the family. If we devalue the importance of motherhood, we devalue women, and we devalue the dignity of human life. I think our culture is doing just that. It is my contention that the ways in which our culture is demeaning mothers and motherhood and women are attacks on human life and its sanctity. If the world can accomplish that, then we no longer will live in gratitude; instead we will live in selfishness which is exactly that Satan hopes happens. Are we grateful, or are we selfish? How do we answer that question?
Now, I know many people grew up without a mother, or perhaps a less than good one. I know if you are one of those who experienced that, Mothers’ Day can be painful. My own father grew up without a mother. Grandma died when dad was only three years old. If your mom died in your infancy, or abandoned the family for some reason, I ask you to
bear this cross with gratitude nonetheless. Perhaps you have a greater reason for living in gratitude for you too were given life and now you are living it courageously. Perhaps you are the ones who live gratefully for the gift of life sustained by others, and you now live for others. I know my dad did not live in selfishness or bitterness for having been orphaned. There was a simple gratitude for how life developed for him. He gave himself for his family’s sake.
I end with this prayer for all our moms. Heavenly Father, I lift up to you today all our mothers. Bless them with strength to continue to care for their children, with the same bold selflessness Mary showed Jesus. Help our mothers feel our gratitude for all they have done and truly know the effect their love has had on our lives. Grant them we pray peace of heart and the joys of life now and into eternity. Amen.r
