Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A
Why does loving God require something of us?
Why should we have to, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel today, ‘keep His commandments”? Isn’t God’s love supposed to be unconditional?
Of course, God’s love is without condition. God’s love for each and every one of us is complete and untethered by requirement. Nothing we do makes Him love us more, or less. He cannot change. But, let us notice, that the love Jesus is talking about in the Gospel today is not God’s love for us…but our love for Him.
Because this, on the other hand, is quite often conditional. We rather frequently place conditions of comfort or success on the Lord, and isn’t it so often the case that we only turn to God when we are at our wits end?
This reference may be a bit out of season, but we might think of George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” – “Dear Father in heaven, I’m not a praying man but if you’re up there and you can hear me show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. Show me the way.”
As followers of Christ, though, we are called to the conviction that neither we nor George would never reach the end of our rope, if we kept a better focus on the way of living Jesus shows us.
Deep within ourselves, and I do not mean only those of us sitting in this Church, but all human persons, is a profound desire and capacity for good. To love and to be loved, and at the root of this is the natural yearning for God. For many, this natural interior reality is never quite recognized for what it is, and so the outward expression of this longing takes many forms, some of which are dangerous.
Yet, Providence has designed a failsafe for just this problem. He has ordered nature so that His love can be seen reflected in everything, and in the most complete way, in Human love.
Human love, at its heart, directs us to God’s love.
And in those times when God’s love is harder to see, or for those people in all of our lives who’s predispositions and attachments disable them from realizing their own internal desire for God, experiences of Human love can be a catalyst toward a recognition of Divine love.
It is at this realization that our celebration of Mother’s this weekend seems to fit well. All things as they should be, Mom is our first teacher of both human and divine love. She is the first voice we recognize, the first touch we feel, the first eyes we gaze into. Mothers are meant to be our models of love, and by God’s grace for most of us, this is the case. But the painful fact is that Mother’s Day, and the topic of a mother’s love, is one which is not happy and joyful for everyone.
Frankly, the dangerous thing about Mother’s Day is that Mothers are human, and therefore, they are not always perfect. Even for those of us who’s Mom was or is a phenomenal witness to love, and full of unconditional affection, there were likely some times when the relationship was not so perfect, when mistakes were made.
This is why it is important that what we celebrate this weekend is not merely perfectly loving mothers, but all loving mothers.
Yes, mothers who love and raise their natural children, teaching and guiding, are profound gifts. But equally so are those women who take in and love children by adoption, or as step-mother. Those women who fulfill the role of Mom for others who didn’t have one while growing up, for Grandmothers who raise their children’s children out of love for both, and though often forgotten, let us also celebrate those women who, though deeply desiring to, are unable to have natural children, but who show a Mother’s love in so many other ways throughout their lives.
Because in any example of self-giving motherhood, of sacrificial love, of teaching and forming children, the image of the only perfect human Mother shines forth.
As we honor our earthly mothers, and motherly figures, this weekend, let us also honor our Blessed Mother, chosen from among women, who shows us how to love in a Human way, and how to be loved in a Divine way,
and whose life and example demonstrate the greatness possible when we follow the commandments of the Lord, and when we give Him our heart.
Preached on Sunday, May 14th, 2023 at St. Augustine’s, Peru, St. Alexander’s, Morrisonville, and St. James’, Cadyville
At St. James’, Cadyville, Fr. Carlin’s own mother (Beth Carlin) was in the Congregation.
