News

Love’s Changing Landscape

5th Sunday of Easter – Year C

In the Gospel, Jesus gives us the Great Commandment: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.” Like the disciples, we should love each other as Jesus loves us. We know, however, that it is not easy to practice this love in our daily lives. If we want to practice true love, then we must also practice true faith.

Sometimes God disturbs our equilibrium and, through difficult situations, pushes us to have more faith in Him. We experience trials because God wants our faith and love to become deeper and more dynamic. Peter is a good example. He thought that he loved Jesus, but when trials came, he denied Jesus three times. Yet, this denial was a happy fault through which Peter discovered Christ’s love and forgiveness, which enabled Peter to love the Lord in truth—the truth about Peter’s own weakness. Similarly, when a wife loves her husband and when she forgives him when he does something wrong, and when a husband sees that his wife forgives him, their love can become even deeper and intense.

God permits difficulties, wounds, misunderstandings and other trials in our lives with the hope that they will deepen our faith in Him and our charity toward others.

A year ago each of us believed and loved but with a different intensity. When we were children, we loved and believed differently. And when we arrive at the autumn of life, our love and faith will still look different than they do now because they will have been forged in the fire of God’s purifying love.

Yours in Christ,
Father Arthur

Readings for the Fifth Sunday of Easter: Lectionary 54