I was unable to produce postings this past week due to a difficult time with bronchitis -- my first time with the infection that almost moved into pneumonia. My doctor spoke words many of us fear: take the entire week and don't do anything! Rest! Read! etc. I tried my best to follow his orders but was not able to succeed entirely. Now I am back on track!
Sixth Sunday of Easter
May 13, 2011
Mother's Day
Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is of God;
everyone who loves
is begotten by God and knows God.
Whoever is without love does not know God,
for God is love.
In this way the love of God was revealed to us:
God sent his only Son into the world
so that we might have life through him.
In this is love:
not that we have loved God,
but that he loved usand sent his Son
as expiation for our sins.
On the day we honor our mothers in this year 2012, the scripture readings for the 6th Sunday within the Easter season focus on the theme of love. Truly a good mixing of scripture and what is celebrated in most homes.
The second reading form the liturgy is from St. John's first letter. The "beloved apostle" writes that love is the very heart of life and the living of our lives. Furthermore, the disciple whose writings reflect that love should be the center of life for every human being whether Christian or otherwise.
St. John would have us see love as a reality that does not happen only occasionally. Our faith, again driven by love as have seen in the life of the man whose very name has become our mark of identification, Christian, is also a model of the woman who very life has been love from the moment of our conception until the day she leaves to be with the Christ whose love she captured in her heart not only for herself but for all her loved ones.
Surely my mother, like all mothers, possessed natural human weaknesses at times. But, despite these human traits, our mothers are or have been models of the way human life should be experienced to the fullest. When you reflect upon your mother today, your grandmother even a sibling-sister, hopefully you can join me in reiterating the words of an ancient "father" of our Church, St. Irenaus: "The glory of God is a person fully alive." I know my mother who lived for 87 years tried her best to reflect her faith as well as the God who is the true experience of love.
St. John teaches in his first letter that there is before us and with us and for us the person who may be or have been the fine example of the present of love in your life ... and for us isn't that none other than a mother, a wife or a sister?
Did you ever consider you mother to be a model of the Good Samaritan? Perhaps we might not overlook this comparison. Regardless of our actions either as a growing offspring or an adult child, mothers do not fail to do what ever they can to make you better when we might have become the victim of life's enemies. Mothers reach out with compassionate love whether we are smiling, moaning, paining or tearing. Mothers cannot help but being examples of love because what made our mothers special was the reality that only one person of the Trinity had a human mother so very much like your mother or my mother. These are the human beings who take to heart Jesus' command: "... you must love one another, as I have loved you." As you look back on your own life and different events, if you are like me, you can recall moments when Mom would not allow our misdeeds to block her love for us.
You and I, we love others as we do because our mothers were women empowered by the God who is love to teach you and me how to love. When you speak about Mom today reflect on these words from an Irish Jesuit priest of our times: "To be able to reach out in love and to experience being loved is God's greatest grace."
