a love that enables you to love others

VI Sunday of Easter “A” John 14, 15-21 Jesus said to his disciples: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him, because he remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him." If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you keep my commandments, you will love me. This circular argument seems to be central to John’s Gospel. In John’s Gospel there is only one commandment. There is no turn the other cheek, no forgive 7 times seven times, no go the extra mile. No, the only commandment that Jesus gives us in John’s Gospel is the commandment to love. That is all that we are called to do. To love God, neighbor, and self. And if you love Jesus, you will keep his commandments and he will send you another advocate, the Holy Spirit to be with us always. What will the Holy Spirit do? The Spirit will love us and unite us to God and will enable us to do what? Love! And how do we love God? By keeping his commandments. If it seems all too circular it is. That is the idea, we are pulled into this wonderful circle of God’s love. God loves us which gives us the power to love God and we love God by loving one another. This spiral pulls us in and as we are pulled in, we share in the trinity. To be a follower of Jesus is not simply obeying the commandments. To be a disciple of Jesus isn’t just about obeying all the rules, rather it is an invitation to participate in the mystery of the trinity. Today we celebrate our mother’s. What makes someone a good mother? Her love for her children. And it is like the love of God. A good mother loves her child not because her child loves her, not because her child obeys all the rules. No, a good mother simply loves her children because there are hers. It is a love that pulls you and the children love in response. More than giving biological birth to your children, more than providing for your children’s needs, making sure that they do what is right, no it is loving your children. It is loving others that makes one truly a mother. To be in a relationship with your children. A relationship of love. To be a Christian does not merely mean you observe all the laws, that you don’t break any of the rules. No, to be a Christian means that you have a deep relationship of love the three persons of the Most Holy Trinity. In the same way today, we honor our mothers not because they obeyed all the rules on being a good mother, but for their deep relationship of love with their children. Next Sunday we will celebrate the feast of Ascension. The Ascension does not mean that Jesus is now absent, that he has been taking into the clouds, “Bye-bye.” No, it means that Jesus is ever more present in the community. That is the gift of the Easter Season. So today fittingly we celebrate our mothers because we believe that their love for us is also a gift of the Spirit. Their love draws us closer to them and their love draws us closer to God and to one another. So keep on loving your mothers even if there are in heaven. And I promise you that their love will draw you in and it will draw you closer to God as well.