At this time of the Easter Season and until Pentecost, the Church hears the Lord’s Farewell Discourse at Mass: chapters 14-17 of the Gospel of Saint John. I really want to encourage us all to pick up our Bibles! Read and reread it these days, in small pieces as we do at Mass. No words holier, truer, or more mystical have been spoken - and they are for us, all who believe. Yet they may seem hard to get a hold of and very confusing.
But we need to spend time with them. We need to let them echo and reverberate in our hearts. To Listen!
The Lord is giving us an invitation to let ourselves be drawn in deeper and deeper into the heart of Christ.
But to hear we need meditate on them in our personal prayer and share them at home, helping the kids to hear with their hearts!
So we hear today: the Lord commands, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Wow – that seems overwhelming… It sounds impossible…
but He had just said He wants to remain in us… He will give us the paraclete… He wants to love others through us!
He really means that He lives in Us! Let it sink in deep into your heart.
Through His Words we hear every day… Here, now, in this Eucharist, each time we receive communion… Then to open our hearts to how He is truly always with us and in us and us in Him. He is Love and Love is Him.
Christ is our Peace and true peace is the presence of the Holy Spirit.
He wants us to wake up to this. To see him in the beauty of a spring day. To see Him in our loved ones and even in each person we meet. Especially in those who suffer and are in need…That is to be more and more the way we truly see and experience our lives.
At that intimate moment with His friends before His Passion, the Lord shows us Who He is, who we are and are to be, and how He will transform us and His creation by His love.
Let Christ's love transform you!
