Today, we are not only celebrating the 6th Sunday in the Easter season, but we are also celebrating First Communion with our children at the 8:30 am mass this weekend. It is a very joyful day for our children, their families, and our parish. It is a very special way to celebrate Christ’s presence in our lives.
Christ gives us the Eucharist out of his great love for us, so what better Gospel reading could we have, of Jesus giving us the commandment to love one another. But Jesus does not call us to an ordinary kind of love: he tells us to love one another in the same way that he loves us. This is not a romantic or superficial love, but rather an AGAPE love: a love that seeks the highest good of another person. AGAPE love does not only come out of our emotions in the normal way we think about love in our culture, but rather out of our mind, our intellect, and our entire being. AGAPE love is a caring love that is intimately involved in the needs of the other person, a love that does not depend upon being reciprocated or being earned. Jesus calls us to a love that is selfless and that willingly takes on discomfort and sacrifices for the good of the other person. Jesus is the ultimate model of this love, willing to give up his life on the cross out of his love for us.
Our first reading very much compliments Christ’s message in the Gospel, as we hear of the Holy Spirit falling on the crowd who was speaking to Peter, with many Gentiles being baptized in the faith that day and with many gifts being given to them by the Spirit. The Early Church felt at first that one had to first be a Jew before he could enter the way of Jesus, but the Spirit working in the community changed their minds and their hearts, opening the way of Jesus to many.
In two weeks, we will celebrate Pentecost, the end of the Easter season with the coming of the Holy Spirit into our world in a special way. Receiving Christ in the Eucharist, journeying through life as disciples of Christ, and celebrating the presence of the risen Christ within us during the Easter season - all of these things call us to a life of holiness. Pope Francis in the new Apostolic exhortation “Gaudete et Exsultate” (Latin for “rejoice and be glad”) states that all of us are called to holiness as disciples of Christ. Holiness is not just a lofty virtue that only a bishop or a priest or a member of a religious congregation can obtain, that we can only obtain by withdrawing from our everyday lives. According to Pope Francis, we are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves. May we always hear that call to holiness in our lives.
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