2015/05/10 — 6th Sunday of Easter

The love of God for us, our love for one another, and the action of the Holy Spirit in choosing us are the themes this Sunday.

The gospel (John 15:9-17)* begins with Jesus saying that he loves us in the same way the Father loves him — which is totally. He tells us to remain in his love, which we do by keeping his commandments. In other words, we can separate ourselves from his love by failing to keep his commandments. His commandment is that we love one another as he has loved us — which means that we lay down our lives for one another as he laid down his life for us.

This can seem kind of abstract until we remember that Jesus also said that love of God and love of neighbor are the two greatest commandments, and that all the others depend on those two. In other words, the commandments (honor parents; do not murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness, or covet) are specific instances of loving one another. And we need to understand those commandments in the way Jesus taught them in the Sermon on the Mount and in other contexts. Turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give to those in need, avoid anger, don't look at others with lust, forgive. In one way or another, the entirety of morality is part of what it means to love.

Jesus goes on to say that our being his disciples comes from his having chosen us rather than our choosing him. Of course, we have to respond to that choice. If we do, the consequence is that we bear fruit, as he puts it metaphorically. That fruit is the loving way of life to which the Sermon on the Mount points.


The second reading (1 John 4:7-10)* makes some of the same points. God loves us before we love him. When we live in love we live in God, and if we don't love we don't know God. God is love, a love that is revealed in Jesus' coming among us so we can have life through him.


While the first reading (Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48) doesn't seem to have much to do with the others, in one sense it exemplifies what they say about God loving us first and choosing us. While the reading has selected verses of chapter 10 of Acts, the full story is all of the chapter. God prompts Cornelius to send for Simon Peter. Peter is given a symbolic vision to teach him that the rules of ritual purity no longer apply, meaning that he is allowed to associate with Gentiles. While Peter is preaching to Cornelius and his family, the Holy Spirit falls on them, as he did on the disciples at Pentecost (which we'll hear about in the first reading on Pentecost, two weeks from now), whereupon Peter orders that they be baptized. It is God who chose them, and, in the person of Peter, the Church recognizes the action of God.

It is important for us to realize that God is free to do what he wants — to choose whomever he wants for whatever graces or works he wants — and that this can go beyond our own limited understanding. We do not control access to God. But God can use us to bring people to knowledge of him, just as he used Peter to bring the inchoate faith of Cornelius to the point where he was able to receive the Holy Spirit. We need to be alert to see what God is doing in our lives: how he is calling us to live out our love for him and one another, how he is enabling us to witness to Jesus as Savior of the world — by our way of life and, when given the chance, by our words.


* It is possible that in some places the second reading and gospel will be those assigned for the Seventh Sunday of Easter — 1 John 4:11-17, a further proclamation of God's love remaining in us; and John 17:11b-19, in which Jesus prays that his disciples will remain in the truth of God's word and be protected from the evil one. Truth and love go together.

The reason for this possibility is that the feast of the Ascension of the Lord can be celebrated on its traditional date, the Thursday 40 days after Easter, or on the following Sunday, which is the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Where the Ascension is celebrated on the Sunday, then that Sunday's second reading and gospel can be read on the Sixth Sunday.