6-May-2012 Dear Friend, Young people tend to evaluate how popular they are by the number of friends they have on Facebook! They may have never even met the person in real life but they are called friends. We all need friends, whom we love and who care for us. Who are our friends? Are we only looking at what we can get from our friends? Do we give in order to get something from friends? Is God our friend? Have a 'God friendly-weekend'! Fr. Jude Sunday Reflections: 6th Sunday of Easter: 'I call you friends! Remain always in my love!' 13-May-2012 Readings: Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48 1 John 4: 7-10 John 15: 9-17 The first reading reminds us that Peter was mysteriously brought to the house of Cornelius to preach the Good News. Peter had believed that Jesus came for the Jews alone; above all, the Jews were the chosen people of God. God reveals to Peter that He has no favourites. Everyone is a favourite of God. A sign that accompanies Peter's presence in the house of this first non-Jew believer is the outpouring of the Spirit on the entire household. God pours his blessings on all. He is like the sun that shines for all and the rain that makes no distinction. We cannot put curbs to how God acts and often God is to be found among the people in whom we least expect to find him. Sometimes when we have been blessed by God we tend to believe that we are special, that we are the favoured ones and that the blessing we have received is only for us, and others are excluded. Today we are reminded that if we are believers, we have to be open to all and build bridges rather than barriers between us. Don't bug me! Hug me! "Don't bug me! Hug me!" says a bumper sticker. One man who believes this strongly went around giving hugs to all sorts of people. Challenged to come to a home for the disabled, he hugged people, who were terminally ill, severely retarded or quadriplegic. Finally he came to the last person, Leonard, who was wearing a big white bib, on which he was drooling. Overcoming his initial reluctance, the man took a deep breath, leaned down and gave Leonard a hug. All of a sudden Leonard began to squeal, "Eeehh! Eeeehh!" Some of the other patients in the room began to clang things together. The man turned to the staff- physicians, nurses and orderlies -for some sort of explanation, only to find every one of them was crying. To his enquiry, "What's going on?" the head nurse said, "This is the first time in twenty three years we have ever seen Leonard smile." Harold Buetow in 'God Still Speaks: Listen!' In the gospel we are once again reminded of the outgoing nature of God, because of which he continues to love us and share his spirit with all peoples. If we are to be his disciples we too have to be people who go out of our way to love others. In order to be his loving disciples Jesus reminds us; "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love." We could ask: How do we remain in his love? What does remaining in his love imply? "If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love." To be a Christian is to love as Jesus loved and we know that Jesus loved with a strong love, with no terms and conditions, he loved till it hurt; he loved till the very end. We are called to be friends of the master, not servants of the master! A servant does not know what his master is doing. "You did not choose me, I choose you!" "What I command you is to love one another." The Risen Lord's encounter with Peter after the resurrection has no traces of resentment at Peter's failure. He does not remind Peter of his denial and failure, he speaks only of the present. The past is forgotten, the present alone matters. "Simon, son of John do you love me?" Love is all that counts and love is the only thing that can change our world upside down. If we are His disciples then we will strive to love like him. We will live for love. Self-giving Love At the time of writing the gospels, the Greek language had two words for love. 'Eros' meant romantic love. The wise Greeks knew that there was much more to real love than infatuation and physical pleasure and they used another word, 'agape', to describe the love that is rooted in self-giving that blossoms in adversity, that develops into community leading to lasting joyful fidelity and peace-filled security. It is this word agape that was used in Sunday's readings to describe, however inadequately, the love between the Father and Jesus. It is with this same love that God loves us and empowers us to love one another. The core of this love is in the lover always taking the initiative, reaching out in goodness to the loved one. Such love can never be earned. It is always a gift freely given, hopefully evoking a loving response but never withdrawn, no matter what the response. Tom Clancy in 'Living the Word' True Love is Dangerous Rita was dying of a disease from which her nine-year old brother, Richard, had just recovered. The surgeon said to Richard. "Only a transfusion of your blood will save your sister. Are you ready to give her your blood?" Richard was terrified but finally said, "OK, Doctor!" After the transfusion, Richard asked quietly, "Doctor, when will I die?" It was only then that the doctor understood Richard's fear: he thought that by giving his blood he would die for Rita. Is our love a ready-to-die love?" Little Richard was ready to die for Rita. And many mothers daily sacrifice so much so that their children might live fully. But what about our larger family, the world? -We have a glowing example of a ready-to-die love in Indian social activist Medha Patkar, who sacrificed a flourishing legal career in Mumbai to work for the rights of tribals. She was accused of 'Attempted suicide' since her fast against the height of the Narmada Dam was seen as potentially dangerous to the powers that be. True love is dangerous! Francis Gonsalves in 'Sunday Seeds for Daily Deeds' Greater love than this no man has… When Damien the Leper arrived in Molokai, he spent the first few weeks sleeping out under the trees, because he was unable to cope with the stench in the hovels of the lepers. He certainly wouldn't dare preach to them about God's love for them because, as they saw it, that would be offensive. He opened his heart to the grace of God and, in no time at all, he came to love them and, through him, they came to believe that God loved them. He smoked a pipe to counteract the stench, but he soon was passing the pipe around for others to have a smoke. He ate food with them from a common bowl, out of which they scooped the food with hands that had no fingers. He caught the disease himself, and he was happy to be able to live and to die for them. Greater love than this no one has. Jack McArdle in 'And that's the Gospel Truth!' The Love Prescription It was on 6th June 1944, a group of paratroopers called 'The Screaming Eagles", out of love for humanity and in defense of freedom, spearheaded the invasion of Normandy, knowing full well that many of them would die, and in fact one company jumped with 208 enlisted men and 11 officers but only 69 enlisted men and four officers came back. Yes: love is real, not just a fantasy and to love even heroically is possible and loving is the soul of life. Without love in life, what would happen to our world?" Hence Jesus commands: "Love one another" His commandment is a prescription, the type of prescription we find in a cooking book which says, "You cannot cook Chicken Biriani without rice." Rice is a prescription and a condition. Likewise, Jesus says that without love, the live ingredient, human life is hell. -A parish priest wrote to all his parishioners explaining that the annual cost of heating the church had risen to five thousand pounds. To overcome the problem of costs, the building was to be weather proofed and he suggested that people dress more warmly. "But," he continued, "The best way the parishioners can help is to bring a friend to church with them; for body heat is still one freely available natural energy resource." The priest's suggestion was an obvious one for, on average, the heat from three people is equivalent to a 1 kilowatt electric fire. It is often easy, however, to overlook the obvious. Are we overlooking the obvious characteristic of our parish community which is 'love'? Vima Dasan in 'His Love Lives' Carrying a Burden Alone Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the great humanitarian, theologian, musician, and physician was eighty-five years old when I visited his jungle hospital at Lambarene, on the banks of the Ogowe River. One event stands out in a special way. It was eleven in the morning. The equatorial sun was beating down mercilessly, and we were walking up a hill with Dr. Schweitzer. Suddenly he left us and strode across the slope of the hill to a place where an African woman was struggling upward with a huge armload of wood for the cook fires. I watched with both admiration and concern as the eighty-five- year-old man took the entire load of wood and carried it on up the hill for the relieved woman. When we all reached the top of the hill, one of the members of our group asked Dr. Schweitzer why he did things like that, implying that in that heat and at his age he should not. Albert Schweitzer, looking right at all of us and pointing to the woman, said simply, "No one should ever have to carry a burden like that alone." Andrew Davidson You are Precious in My Sight Harold Hughes was a United States Senator and a former Governor of Iowa. God drastically changed his life. He was a hopeless alcoholic, wallowing in his own vomit, and so despairing that he was ready to take his own life away. He was uncontrollably addicted to alcohol. He reached a point where his wife and children left him and he lost his job. One day he ended up drunk, sitting in his bathtub with the barrel of a gun in his mouth and his finger on the trigger. Then he fortunately cried out to God. Immediately, he felt a spreading sense of peace within that delivered him from the crises of the moment. Through much struggle and pain, God led him along until he was at last free from the grip of alcohol. He eventually became the governor of his state and a United States senator. -We may be unwanted by people; we may be rejected and shunned by people but: we are wanted by God; we are worthy, we are precious in the eyes of the Lord. In prophet Isaiah, the Lord said, "Because you are precious in my sight, I love you (43:4)" After Mother Theresa received the Noble Prize, someone asked her, "How can we solve the world's problems." She replied, "Go home and love one another." The thing that is destroying the world today is: hatred and intolerance. It is only love, which can save the world from destruction. And love shall be the only thing that is eternal. John Rose in 'John's Sunday Homilies' May our love of others be seen in solidarity in action!!
Fr. Jude Botelho [email protected] PS. The stories, incidents and anecdotes used in the reflections have been collected over the years from books as well as from sources over the net and from e-mails received. Every effort is made to acknowledge authors whenever possible. If you send in stories or illustrations I would be grateful if you could quote the source as well so that they can be acknowledged if used in these reflections. These reflections are also available on my web site www.netforlife.net Thank you.
