Church of Jesus Christ of the Universe

by Mauro

(translated audio)

04.05.2024

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Acts 10: 25-27/34-35/44-48; Ps 97(98); 1Jn 4: 7-10; Jn 15: 9-17

In the readings of this Sixth Sunday of Easter Time, Year B, but somewhat all the week long – and all this time long where we are reading the Gospel of St. John –, the commandment that should be our rule, for us Christians, is reiterated: «Love one another», «God is love».

Who attend Holy Mass every day or read the readings, have certainly heard how even in that dispute between the disciples – between circumcision and non-circumcision¹ – they clearly say: Moses is proclaimed on every Sabbath, it is up to us to proclaim what Christ says. Moses is the law of Moses; the command of the Christ is «God is love, love one another».

Christians have begun this journey, they should increasingly have embodied it, increasingly have made it their own, and they should – in every age, in every era – always bring that something more, but in this line, in this newness: the new man. Great saints have succeeded in this; although we know – it is no secret – they have always been discovered at least a hundred years later, the message they brought has quite always become known after their death. And this has led to the loss of many graces because we have to live them while they are there.

St John says in his letter: «God is love. God loved us first». If we look at it closely, he also adds something fundamental: «Love one another». We should take that command and choose that command to be our life: «for love is from God: whoever loves is begotten of God». With «is begotten of God» he does not mean begotten at conception (that is also true), but whoever chooses to accept Christ and live by His law is begotten of God.

«Love one another». Look, here I have to tell you the same thing as with regard to forgiveness: forgive those who offend us, love our enemies. This is impossible for man. Even to love one another as He has loved us is IMPOSSIBLE to man, and whoever tries with his own strength will make a bad copy and will not succeed. The only way to succeed is to choose Christ, choose to live for Christ, choose to dedicate our life to Christ, marry Christ. This does not mean we should become monk, priest, or nun; this means that Christ is our Spouse. Even if we were called to marriage, we begin to desire to love everyone, to desire it.

None of us can love as He loved; we desire to love, and then who loves is begotten of God, begins to be begotten. How? He loved us first, He loved us when we did not deserve it, He loves us even if according to our reasoning – which is also a bit of an obstacle – it is impossible that He loves us. Instead, the first step is precisely to be certain in faith – and feel it inside (but I cannot explain how everyone will feel it) – that God has loved us, forgiven us. “He has forgiven us”: this is a plus because it is not difficult for Him to forgive us, He simply loves us. This Love transforms us, changes us, and leads us to ask for forgiveness. Asking forgiveness serves us, it does not serve Him, He loves us!

This happened also to the great saints: St Paul², we have read it some days ago, when he fell off his horse, he felt that love. From there on begins that journey described by John in his first letter³: God is light and whoever is in the light is begotten, is transformed. Therefore, our passage is to stand in the light.

I repeat: this Love that loved us first, for us is not normal. We are always trying to earn the love of God and to present ourselves as beautiful, righteous, healthy, to do works for which we deserve to be loved; whereas, instead, the passage is precisely to realize “I know that He loves me.” Then all my works and my beauty come out to the extent that I stand in the light.

Again, in that letter John says⁴: «Who is it that is not in the light? He who says he has no sin.» Who does not want the light? Who does not want that light to show who he really is. Instead, if we stand in that love, in the light, there comes out what we are – we are what we are – but we feel that love, and there we are begotten. But first we must desire it; God does not violate anyone.

I have outlined steps here that go beyond this and for which I see the following decision as a given: that we have chosen Christ. But the journey begins standing in the light: this does not mean no more mistakes. On the contrary, the light gets stronger and stronger, and so I think it will have happened to everyone on this journey to see that the further we go, the dirtier we get. The further we go, the more it seems we have not understood anything. The further we go, the more it seems we cannot do it. And that is true, by ourselves we cannot do it, but this happens because that light that increases within us, makes us see all that is wrong with us.

Here I open a parenthesis. It is often said of many saints that they confessed themselves every day. It may seem like a lot to us but the more you stand in the light, the more you confess every day (I would say at least six or seven times a day). I do not mean going to the priest and tiring him out; but in that light, in our dimension with Christ, seven times a day is not enough for me, I would need seventy times seven. But not by guilting myself or feeling like a nothing, because each time the love of God increases by seeing this; I understand the greatness of God, of that infinite love that deserves to be loved.

I open another parenthesis. All this begins choosing Christ. The first step, after choosing Christ, would be Baptism, where our life is buried in Christ⁵. We Christians, unfortunately, do not really experience all these realities that are of an infinite greatness, an infinite grace, an infinite mercy and of a scope that is the only one that counts; here on Earth the only thing that must count for us is Baptism, Communion, Holy Mass, Christ. Instead, they are a plus, for us is more important to marry, earn money, have healthy children, a good job, let us be honest. The path that God has foreseen is different. Let us look at the liturgy, at Easter or at Christmas: it is not at random; look at all the path to be in Christ, for Life, because life is that.

Regarding Baptism, my life is buried in Him, then put everything else in it: the sacraments, the Mass. If we want to take a quick look at the liturgy: we will be given a Son – Christmas – we wait for Him, we are lost, we lack something and we are given a Son. We accept that Son – the Baptism of the Lord – we receive Baptism. In February there is the offering of life, Jesus who is offered in the temple⁶, and the same for us. Then we enter the whole dimension of understanding what we have done, who we have given our life to, what our life is all about; it is all about looking at our life together with Him, there is Easter, and we rise.

Then we wait for Ascension, (for us next Sunday), and we bring everything to Christ, we are in the light. This is, what I am trying to say. We have forty days of full light where we see that everything within us must be brought to Christ, must be brought to the Father through Christ, and that is Ascension. When this is done, the Holy Spirit descends upon us and enlightens us in all that is our mission, our path; because when we have brought all of ourselves – through the Holy Spirit – the mission starts, we no longer live for ourselves, we live for others. With the Holy Spirit we receive the anointing and can leave. We leave our Jerusalem, and we start; and we repeat this over and over again.

All the other feasts are connected to this: the Trinity, Corpus Domini, Mary assumed into Heaven, they are all connected. But this path is not at random: this is LIFE, true Life. Everything else is not true life, it is filling the hours of these years that we have to be here on earth, but it is not living.

We will be that light placed over a stand and not under the bushel, to shine⁷; we will be Christians. This is what Christians are for. If they do not live and do this, excuse me, but they are of no use, they are like salt that is not salted⁸. What are they for? We even provoke the outrage of others a little, because there are so many Buddhists (I am reading a book about this) – but let us take a Gandhi – who emphasise that what Christianity brings, comes from a God and not from a man; it is the only religion that comes from God. But it seems to be impossible to live it.

So, I ask you: is it possible to love one another as God has loved us? Is it possible to forgive? Is it possible to be happy? Is it possible to live the Gospel? Is it possible to find ten people who manage to live like that? Ten – I think there are a billion Christians – people who live like that on this earth; TEN. I want to answer it is possible, but there is only one way: to die to ourselves, otherwise no, it is not possible. There is a road I must be clear with myself in front of God without playing games, without finding loopholes. The Gospel must be lived.

What I have said today, sorry, but it is Gospel because St John is Gospel, even though these things are in the first letter. If we want to be begotten of God, we must love; if we want to love we must choose Christ and die to ourselves. We must stand in the light and therefore may not hide our fears, our limits, our sins. But, once again, we always think of sins as being related more to the law of Moses than to the law of Christ. In the law of Christ, if we do not love someone, we are already in sin. No need to slap him, to think badly, to say a word too much: it is enough to not love him, and we have already sinned.

Think what the world would be like if Christians, at least a few of them, suddenly put this commandment into practice. It would be much better than keeping the whole law of Moses to the letter, more than being all super good, all humanly perfect, feeding the entire world, curing all the sick, healing all the lepers. It would not produce the same result that a little group living like this would produce. «Love one another».

St Paul says: «The law condemns you; grace saves you», but grace is this: accepting Christ, otherwise we are not in grace, otherwise we are somewhere between grace and the law, between behaving well and letting Christ use us. Grace transforms us, but we must stand in the light. Even that passage in the Gospel⁹, the final judgement – separating one from the other, those on the right, those on the left: «You came to visit me when I was sick, when…». It is nothing more than that: «love one another». It is not that He says we must go and visit the sick, the imprisoned. If we live like that, we will be those to whom He will say «Come, blessed by my Father». If we do not live like this, even if we have visited all the prisons, we will not be told «Come» but «Away, away from me».

The world is all divided, and as it is divided it is not loving. It is divided in religions, divided in races (whites, blacks, yellows, reds); it is divided within Christians. It seems to me that there are six hundred divisions among Christians, it is not just Protestants, Orthodox, Evangelicals, there are six hundred, all divided. It is even divided among those who are beginning to walk together and offering their lives one for the other. It is divided there too: each one wanting to carry out his own idea, his own charisma. If we take Don Bosco’s people, they are not with the Jesuits, the Jesuits are not with the Franciscans, Franciscans not with the Dominicans. In the same convent, usually if there are thirty, they are ten against twenty and then there is one against all. All divided. We cannot live four under the same roof: there is one we cannot stand with. They put us together to live in twenty, we must keep a little bit apart because otherwise we fight. «Love one another»: it does not seem to exist in this world. I repeat, it is IMPOSSIBLE unless we choose Christ in a radical way.

So, are we ruined? Where is this root that brings us to this? I think that in the end we do not want this light; as the Prologue of St John¹⁰ says: «He came among his own, but his own received him not». But why do we not want it? It is always the same pride, that pride that fools us. Someone, I do not remember which saint, said that our pride disappears three days after we are dead – a saint said it! Because even when we want to accept Jesus, even if we want to totally belong to Him, we never manage to do it by allowing Him to show us what we are. Even those who say, “But I would like that everyone would see me.” Yes, they want to appear as they are, but they hide what they really are. In fact, I think those who are in this attitude are even more hidden than the others. They want to show what they want.

We fail because we always think that we have to do something for Jesus, we have to give Him something in return; we fail to welcome that gratuitousness of His love that generates us. This is the passage: He generates us, so we do not have to calculate what we must do; if we choose Christ, let Him do! And when He starts to work in us, do not hide, silence yourself. He loves us as a sinner, there is no need to hide. He loves us when we are in darkness, no need to justify ourselves. He loves us always. Let us embrace that light and then we will see how darkness becomes noontide and we are transformed. Let us accept this challenge of Jesus, let ourselves be loved!

And may Mary Most Holy accompany us in this, may She truly help us to live this love, to rejoice of this grace, of this gratuitous love which only asks us to be thankful and rejoice. And God bless us, and I bless you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.