Homily @ Eastertide: To Better Love

Year C / Eastertide / Week 5 / Sunday 

Readings: Acts 14.21-27 / Psalm 145:8-9, 10-11, 12-13  (R/v cf1) / Revelation 21.1-5 / John 13.31-35

"I give you a new commandment: love one another; just as I have loved you, you also must love one another.”

 

We read these words. We pray with them. We hear homilies based on them. We know these words; they are Jesus’ new commandment to love. 

But what if this commandment is also Jesus’ legacy – his gift and task – that he left his disciples with then, and is now also for us? Might it invite us to rethink how we are to love one another like Jesus, not because it’s an obligation we have to do but rather because it is the loving thing we want to do as Christians?

 

Agape love is Jesus’ legacy to us: it is simply to love as God loves. Jesus communicates this commandment for he considers it indispensable for any disciple who wants to live and move and act like him.

 

It is so for Jesus because agape love, especially in action, shows Christ-like empathy for others. It desires the good and the best for another. It is for everyone, loving all selflessly with good intentions. Simply put, agape love is sacrificial. No one but Jesus embodies this wholeheartedly. In life and death, and in ministry, he shows us this way, this truth and this life of loving sacrificially.

 

When we face death, we will join many to dispose of our inheritance, precious and treasured, like property, monies or family heirlooms, to family and friends. Jesus does the same with his new commandment to love; he gives it to his own. Because we are his own, this commandment is indeed our inheritance. It is especially poignant because the agape love Jesus bequeaths is really the form and figure of his life (Cyril of Alexandria).

 

Jesus desires to give us his life; we must want to receive it. We can’t unless we make room in our lives to welcome it. If we sincerely do, we can begin to live as Jesus lived, with the great power of his love that passes from death to life. When we do, we profess our Easter faith daily to everyone.

Our acts of love become the way to make the Resurrection a constant practice, a life-giving Christian habit. What we practise is Jesus’ way of loving — unconditionally and without hesitation. This is the radical newness of Jesus’ commandment to love one another as he loved.  What we proclaim with each loving deed, more than in words, is the sure and certain truth that death does not have the last word; love does.

This is how risen Jesus comes to the apostles who had abandoned him – with love, not anger, disappointment or scolding. “Peace be with you,” he proclaims. It expresses his love that still cares and values them. 

“Peace be with you” are also the first words of Pope Leo XIV proclaimed to the world when he was elected. It is “a peace that comes from God, the God who loves us all, unconditionally,” he explained.*

 

We need this kind of peace that only Jesus can give. As a Church, we need it most amongst ourselves and, through us, for the world. For we are a diverse church even as we have one faith, one Lord and share in the one Baptism. As such, there are different understandings of God and faith, different interpretations of the Church’s teachings, different ways of living, worshipping and serving as Christians. 

Sadly, when some of us are selfish, self-righteous and self-preserving, pushing and imposing our own agenda the Church is torn apart. Like when we were divided as the Church went into and during the Conclave because different groups wanted the Church to bend to their progressive or conservative views, opinions and ideologies.

Yet the risen Jesus met us and our differing hopes in Pope Leo; he is the Lord’s choice.  

A progressive on social issues but a conservative on church teachings. A Vatican official who administers well but an Augustinian missionary who pastors even better - like Jesus. A pope in Pope Francis’ style for whom the church must remain missionary by reaching out to the margins, walking as one, welcoming all, especially the suffering, while remaining rooted in Christ and his teachings as Pope Benedict, Pope John-Paul II and every pope before had declared.

It is no wonder Pope Leo wants to be a bridge builder, like Jesus who reconciles and restores. This is how he wants to bring peace to all, echoing Jesus who consoles his disciples and us that there are many rooms in the Father’s house. 

Indeed, what we need to move forward as the Church is unity in diversity. This was Pope Leo’s exhortation when he urged the Church to move forward. He said, "Together, we must look for ways to be a missionary Church, a Church that builds bridges and encourages dialogue, a Church ever open to welcoming, like this Square with its open arms, all those who are in need of our charity, our presence, our readiness to dialogue and our love.”*

 

We can’t do this unless everyone of us, from Pope Leo down to you and me in our parish, learn once again to better love one another as Jesus loved us.

So let us humble ourselves, turn to Jesus and ask for the grace to listen to him, individually and as Church. For Pope Leo, we must. We need Jesus’ guidance and direction for “It is the Risen Lord, present among us,” he teaches, “who protects and guides the Church, and continues to fill her with hope through the love “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). It is up to us to be docile listeners to his voice.”**

Today we hear Jesus’ voice. It declares loudly, clearly - and it declares again - that Christians must love as Jesus loved. When we do, we will be his people, his Church, after his own heart. Then, others will see, hear and experience how Christian love is radically life-giving for everyone. This is why as Christians, we cannot love differently, if not at all.  Shall we?

 

 

* Pope Leo XIV, Urbi et Orbi, 8 May 2025

**Pope Leo XIV, Address to the College of Cardinals, 10 May 2025.


Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus photo: mymotherlode.com