Just a word before we go...Fifth Sunday of Easter...May 15, 2022

I have one of those electronic picture frames that displays photos in a continuous stream. It’s an old one with limited capacity.  At the moment it holds images from my growing up years, and as I see them each day, I sometimes pause to reflect on the memory that is evoked. One photo in particular gives me pause.  It was taken at my maternal grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. My grandparents are in the middle, surrounded by their children, my mother and her brother Mark, and their grandchildren...my three sisters and me.  My father was not pictured as he was the photographer. This image never fails to flood my senses with memories of loving and being loved by these people.

In his book, Jesus: The Man and the Myth, James Mackey writes, “most of us can only sense ourselves and our world (as) valued and cherished by God when we feel valued and cherished by others.”  Jesus’ new commandment as noted in our gospel this weekend is to love one another as he has loved us. In fact the gospel clearly spells out that the quality that will mark us as disciples will be the love, the human love, we show to one another.  Implicit in the message of Jesus is that love of neighbor and love of God are inextricably entwined. 

The idea that the way people come to know the divine is through the human, as theologian John Shea has noted, conveys a new understanding of the meaning of the life and love of Jesus.  If we are to follow him, we are to recognize that we are all connected, and being connected, that we bear responsibility for one another.  When we deny or ignore our connection...to the other...to the earth...to God...we do so at our peril.  

The great message of the Resurrection is hope, hope that what was true for Jesus is also true for us.  Pope Francis says that hope is “the desire for things that fill our hearts...”

...and includes the "desire to fill the lives of others with what is beautiful, sublime and edifying."  In other words, loving others as we love ourselves.

When that priceless photo of the family rejoicing at my grandparents’ anniversary party makes its way into that little frame, my heart is filled with love, love for those depicted and for the One who loved us first, the One in whom we live and move and have our being...the two are of a piece.