{"id":1076,"date":"2018-05-05T23:31:55","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T23:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2018-05-05T23:31:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-05T23:31:55","slug":"homily-easter-season-sunday-06-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/2018\/05\/05\/homily-easter-season-sunday-06-b\/","title":{"rendered":"HOMILY EASTER SEASON SUNDAY 06 \u2013 B"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abiding and Loving \u2013 The Way to Joy<\/em><\/p>\n

(Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 Jn 4:7-10; Jn 15:9-17)<\/p>\n

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Henri Thoreau once said most people live lives of quiet desperation. What a sad statement! What has happened to our ability to experience joy? Would you like to live a more joyful life?<\/p>\n

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The liturgy today offers us a way. All we need to is abide in God\u2019s love, love one another and we will experience joy.<\/p>\n

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The readings mirror the first encyclical of Pope Benedict \u2013 they zero in on the core of our faith: God is love. We are to love God back by abiding in his love, and love one another, in the power of the Spirit.<\/p>\n

How do we abide in God\u2019s love? The answer is prayer, both devotional and liturgical. It is said the Church breathes with two lungs: one lung is devotional prayer, and the other is liturgical prayer, the prayer of the Church.<\/p>\n

Devotional prayer can be private prayer or public devotions like the rosary. Most people are used to \u201csaying prayers.\u201d To truly abide in Jesus\u2019 love, we should strive to deepen our prayer, and move towards a more contemplative kind prayer, listening to God\u2019s word, being sensitive to what God wants to say to us and do within us.<\/p>\n

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An example of this is the hour of adoration that happens in some churches. A group of faithful parishioners come for a very simple time of singing, silence and prayer of adoration \u2013 a beautiful way to abide in God\u2019s love in the Blessed Sacrament.<\/p>\n

When I was a young scholastic preparing for priesthood, I chose Adam Exner, now the archbishop emeritus of Vancouver, to be my spiritual director. During our first session, he told me if he was going to direct me, he would have to know me, and asked me to tell him my story. I proceeded to share with him my life story \u2013 the first time I had ever done that.<\/p>\n

When I finished two sessions later, he told me I needed to work on my relationship with my father and asked me to pray with Isaiah 34:1-7 for a whole month. That passage spoke of God\u2019s love for me, through fire, water and desert, and ended with a statement that shocked me: \u201cYou are precious and honoured in my sight because I love you!\u201d<\/p>\n

How I needed to hear those words at that critical stage of my life. You see, my father was never able to say those words. He was a workaholic and was never able to show his love for us the way we needed it \u2013 he just worked harder. I had reacted by trying to earn his love, and by extension, even God\u2019s love, an impossible task because love cannot be earned \u2013 it is a free gift.<\/p>\n

There was a deep father hunger in my soul that Fr. Adam discerned. He connected my life with the Word of God in a way that started a healing process for me and turned my life around. He asked me to \u201cabide in God\u2019s love\u201d which was exactly what I needed. I even felt some of that joy Jesus speaks about, as well as hope \u2013 a new future was dawning for me because of God\u2019s word.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I was entering into the celebration of morning and evening prayer, as well as daily Eucharist. This experience of liturgical prayer, the prayer of the Church, also worked me over. It too was based on listening to God\u2019s Word, especially through the psalms, and on the celebration of God\u2019s loving presence, especially in communion. I was immersed in God\u2019s love through a solid life of prayer and joy began to grow within me.<\/p>\n

Jesus is very clear \u2013 there is no greater love than to lay down one\u2019s life for others. Loving others involves sacrifice, acts of mercy and charity, doing things for others. The late St. Mother Theresa of Calcutta is a prime example of someone who truly abided in God\u2019s Word, and then expressed her love in active ministry, picking up dying people off the streets of Calcutta and giving them a place where they could die with dignity.<\/p>\n

Renowned preacher Fr. John Fullenback witnessed her handle a difficult patient who had stumped the efforts of a younger sister. Mr. Theresa simply stared her straight in the eyes for a minute, hugged the girl for a full two minutes, then fed her without any problem. She was a professional in the ways of love, and knew the girl needed to be loved with a hug.<\/p>\n

Jesus adds another dimension to loving others, when he states he has revealed to us all that he has learned from the father. That is the element of self-disclosure, trust, fellowship. To be close to God, be closer to people. We need to grow in our ability to trust one another, share our lives with each other, be more transparent to each other, achieve intimacy with trusted others. That is a beautiful way to love another \u2013 to achieve intimacy with a trusted other, especially within a committed relationship of marriage, or just plain friendship.<\/p>\n

God is love, relationship and family. To achieve intimate union with another human being, is to experience Jesus, and the Trinity in that intimacy. It is there that Jesus will reveal himself to us (John 14:21). To establish a relationship of trust and acceptance is one of the deepest and best ways to love another person.<\/p>\n

An example of caring and sharing in this way is Jean Vanier, son of the former governor general of Canada, who started the movement called L\u2019Arche for the mentally challenged. L\u2019Arche provides a home for the handicapped where volunteers live with them as family. He has learned so much from them and shares this wisdom from that experience: \u201cIf I am humble, open and honest enough to share my weakness with my brothers and sisters, then that frees them to be humble, open and honest with me, and together we grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

To do all this, to abide in God\u2019s love, and to love one another, would be impossible without the gift of the Spirit. It is this same Spirit of Jesus poured out upon the early Church, as Peter discovered in the first reading, that enables us to do as Jesus did \u2013 abide in the Father\u2019s love, and love unconditionally and totally.<\/p>\n

The Eucharist is first of all an abiding in God\u2019s love through Word and Sacrament. Then we are commissioned, sent out to be Bread for the World, to love the world as Jesus loved it, to give our lives for our brothers and sisters who are hungering for that experience of God\u2019s love.<\/p>\n

So, to live a life full of joy, abide in God\u2019s love, and love one another. Pray, care and share, in the power of the Spirit, and you will experience joy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abiding and Loving \u2013 The Way to Joy (Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 Jn 4:7-10; Jn 15:9-17) ******************************************************** Henri Thoreau once said most people live lives of quiet desperation. What a sad statement! What has happened to our ability to experience joy? Would you like to live a more joyful life? The liturgy today offers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-easter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1081,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions\/1081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}