May 9, 2021

6th Sunday of Easter (B)         

Love…A Command Yet a Struggle?

Msgr. Thomas Gervasio         

Happy Mother’s Day!

This being our nation’s celebration of the vocation of motherhood, I’d thought I would share a few quips I found on motherhood:
 

• My mother’s menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.
• No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
• When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe, playpen; when they are finished, I climb out.
• Working mothers are part of a scientific experiment to prove that sleep is not necessary to human life.
• You can get children off your lap, but you can never get them out of your heart.

How appropriate that the liturgical readings speak to us of love on Mother’s Day. The Gospel gives us a window into the Upper Room at the Last Supper, and we hear a part of the Lord’s farewell discourse to the apostles. The Lord says: “This I command you: love one another.”

Years ago, I asked a man why he didn’t come to Mass on Sunday. He replied that he was just tired of hearing the same homily every week…love, love, love.” Yet, loving God and loving our neighbor is what we struggle with day in and day out. Some people can be irritating. Other have hurt us deeply. We are not always at our best. When we are tired, we get irritable, and it shows. We can treat others abruptly, rudely. When we have been hurt, the forgiveness love demands does not come easy.

Yet, love is the Lord’s command and St. John of the Cross reminds us that at the end of our life, we shall be judged on love. Perhaps we can better fulfill the Lord’s command with a little help from my friend, the late Cardinal Basil Hume. He suggests that we keep in mind that every person is made in the image and likeness of God and he make three points about it:
 

1. If every single person is made to the image and likeness of God, then every single person can tell me something about God, which nobody else can. God is infinite and an infinite number of people can never express the totality of what God is.
    
2. Every single person has something—a gift or talent or an acquired skill that I don’t have and is, in that respect, superior to me. That is the ground of my respect for them.
    
3. If we are made in the image and likeness of God, we must reflect something of his inmost nature and it has been revealed that God is love. So, to be fully ourselves, to be more truly the image of God, we must be prepared to love unconditionally and without limit. So, our attitude to ourselves and to others must always be positive and accepting.

My love for my neighbor must be genuine, a love based on respect, based on recognition of what God has done in that person, and what God wants of that person and me.

With the example of our mothers before us, let us strive to fulfill in a greater way, in a better way, the Lord’s commandment of love.