Reflection on the Sixth Sunday of Easter

At the Catholic Worker at Mass we took turns preparing a homily. One day the homilist forgot, and so she said, “The Gospel speaks for itself.”

Well, yes, and this entire set of readings in particular speaks for itself. First, the uncircumcised are baptized. All are welcome. In the Epistle John says that love is of God. And the resurrected Jesus says, “Love one another as I have loved you.” I could sit down now, and we could just remember everyone we have loved. Love is of God.

But instead of me sitting down, I thought I could walk us through a little bit of how we learn to love. It is possible that someone here might have had a harsh childhood, but almost all of us are privileged to have been loved tenderly as small children. Think for a moment. Remember being held, comforted. Remember your own warm glow in response, a feeling we learned to identify as love. 

Now remember your own childish generosity. When I was in kindergarten we collected pennies to save pagan babies. It was our candy money. We walked home arm-in-arm with a friend. Maybe you were a child who saw the girl walking alone and you wrapped your arm around her, too. We were making friends and learning that China had poor children, and we were learning how to love both the nearer and the farther neighbor. 

Most people grow up, fall in love, marry and have children. Ann Tyler’s “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant”says early on, all in one paragraph, that the mom was totally unprepared for the immensity of her love for her first child. She was afraid she could not love a second child. It took her by surprise that her love of that second child was equally immense and separate from her love for the first. And again she marveled that her love of her third child was equally enormous as the first two. This is how we learn what God’s love is. 

But some few in the world, many in this room, didn’t have children. We wanted, at 17 or maybe 20, to give our love to the whole world. Those lessons about pagan babies took. We didn’t choose an easy road, any more than motherhood is easy. We gave our hearts to Jesus, to Mary sorrowing at the foot of the cross, to small children ready for first Communion and to teenagers looking for firm ground to stand on. We gave ourselves to justice for farmworkers, a home for everyone, an end to racism. We’ve spent our decades living out this love. There may have been some dramatic moments, but mostly we spent ordinary days doing the work set in front of us, doing it with love. 

It’s always harder to remember to love those not right in front of us. We in Loretto were graced with a call to stand with Mary sorrowing. We grieve because we love. We grieve parents and siblings and friends because we loved them. We grieve the dying in Gaza and the revengeful in Israel because, distant though they are, we have learned to love them. We pray for the suffering world. We stand with the suffering world, and we know love. 

When I came to Loretto I learned to be silent, more silent on Fridays and in Lent. And then, on the Friday before Holy Week, Passion Friday, we celebrated the Sorrowful Mother. We had recreation at breakfast. We had candy. We were joyous on this solemn day in our love of all the suffering world, standing with Mary at the foot of the Cross. It’s a paradox. So today, we stand in shock and horror at human-made misery because we love even the people who are doing terrible things, even political leaders who are saying terrible things. Hard as it is, we love them. And that is our joy.