Happy Mother’s Day to all our moms: our natural mothers; grandmothers; adoptive mothers; spiritual mothers; foster mothers…and all those who minister as mothers for each of us.  Let us pray that these moms always receive from us the blessings of love that they constantly share with us.

Although this seventh Sunday of Easter each year announces the gospel we’ve just heard, it may just be a coincidence that it is also Mother’s Day.  If we take but a moment, most, if not all of us, immediately picture how a mother tenderly and faithfully loves her child.  There’s no hoop for the child to jump through, no payment or bribe to make, no begging…no, the child doesn’t even have to be good or even nice…the mother’s love for that child is guaranteed, constant, ever-present and always full.

And this kind of love between a mother and her child is a wonderful image of the love that is expressed in today’s gospel:  Jesus’ love for the Father and the Father’s great love shared with him in return.  And what is so powerfully important for us to note from our perspective is that Jesus asks the Father to include useach and every one of usin their rapturous love!  Jesus begs the Father to allow such a binding and life-giving love to always bubble up within us, surround us, and enfold us so that His own presence might remain in and around each one of us.  And it is through the love of our mothers and fathers that such a gift is continuously transmitted and shared with each of us to this very day.

Yes, only this kind of lovethat existed from the beginning and has enlivened the Trinity before time beganonly this kind of love is God’s gift to us, a gift to be cherished, a gift to be shared, and a gift worthy of our daily thanks.

May this gift of Christ’s love be ours today and every day.  Amen.