Well, it’s that time of the year, again! Yes, it’s the time of the year for graduations and commencements. The signs are all around us, especially at the nine o’clock liturgy when those graduating from area high schools attend mass, robed in their academic gowns. But it’s also the season for those of us who are not getting out of high school or college. It’s the time of the year for all of us to be thinking about our own graduations and commencements. Not the celebrations we had years ago, but rather, the graduations and commencements all of us are about to undertake in the coming weeks. After all, graduation means to step forth into the world. Commencement means we are ending one cycle of life and about to begin a new cycle, a new adventure.
This is true for every one of us here, today, as the end of the Easter Season is rapidly approaching and we look forward to the celebration of the Ascension next Sunday and to Pentecost, the Sunday afterwards. Once again, we are being asked to step forward in our lives as Christians, to begin, to commence, our lives in the world as post-resurrection Christians.
So, the real question for today is this: Are you ready for your own graduation, your own commencement? Not as graduates of the Klein or Spring ISDs. Not as Aggies or Longhorns or Cougars, but as disciples, followers of Christ? Are you ready to carry out what you have learned from listening to the gospel message we’ve heard during this Easter Season?
Today, we heard our final instruction, our final commandment: “Love one another as I love you.” Are you prepared to do this? Do what? Love everyone just as the Father loves the Son and the Son loves each one of us. That’s what we hear in today’s gospel. That’s what we’ve been hearing throughout our lives. It is what we find so difficult to do.
As graduating students, we are to take out into the world all that stuff we learned in school, those boring lessons in history, in languages, in science and in mathematics. All that information others thought we would need in our future lives. Information we thought was entirely irrelevant to our own future, but which we began to appreciate as being useful when that so-called “future” became our present and then, our past. What we learned, willingly or un-willingly, we found to be necessary for survival.
Among all of these lessons we learn, do we really take to heart the instruction our primary teacher, our major teacher, gave us? “Love one another, as I love you.” After all, he said so many other things, so many other commandments. He even said: “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”
“Remain in my love – ” What does that mean? Again, so many things. The word in Greek means more than “remain.” It means “abide.” It means live with me. It means to share completely with me. To become one with me. Jesus was saying: if you follow the way I have gone, if you do everything I’ve spoken about, then you and I will become as one person. We will become closer than any friendship you thought to be humanly possible. We will not have the relationship of slave and master, not one of in-equality, but one of being full partners. The death of one will be the death of the other. Together we will share life completely.
Yes, it’s no wonder so many young couples choose this passage to be read at the celebration of their wedding, for this, too, is the meaning of the love between husband and wife. It is what they desire when they say: we abide in love.
What else did Jesus say to his disciples, his friends … and to us? “It was not you who chose me, but I chose you … “ In ancient times, disciples chose the master they wanted to follow. But Jesus said he had broken this pattern. He chose them as his companions. He chose them to walk with him.
Saint John, the beloved disciple of Christ, wrote similar words. In today’s second reading, he reminds us that love means: “ – not that we have loved God, but that he loved us – ” God loves us, each one of us. He loves us first. Before we can love him, he loves us. We can merely respond to his love by returning our love to him. We exist because of God’s love for us, each of us.
Yet, Jesus goes on to tell us how we can give our own love to God. He begins by saying: “It was not you who chose me, but I chose you – ” He immediately continues: “– and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain – ” He chooses us, and appoints us, to bear fruit that will remain. We are to bear fruit that “remains,” that “abides, ” that lives on. Fruit to be shared with others. And who are these others?
Peter, in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles, answers this question. When others criticized Peter for entering the house of Cornelius, a gentile and a Roman centurion, the home of a despised military leader, Peter replied, “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.”
The reading goes on to explain how the household of Cornelius was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. Upon seeing this, Peter urged that the entire household should be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, today, there are some Christians who believe the fruits of God’s love should be restricted to only those who have view which are identical to those they, themselves, hold. Some tend to act as if they should love only those with whom they are comfortable. Not the stranger, not the widow, not the alien, not the orphaned, not the homeless, not the sick, not those in prison.
There are those who forget what Jesus said to his friends, to those whom he chose to abide with him, to find life with him. “Love one another as I love you.” Yes, “ – as I love you …” Completely, unconditionally, without any reservation. I do not restrict my love only to those who are of one race, one nation, one political group, one belief structure. I chose you as friends, not as slaves. Follow me.
Oh yes, the real question for today and every day is this: are you ready to graduate, to step forth, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, as we begin our own post-resurrection commencement? How do you respond to his commandment: “Love one another as I love you.”
Sixth Sunday of Easter; May 21, 2006
Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 Jn 4:7-10; Jn 15:9-17