Church of St. Mary at Clinton Heights

What do we do with our friends?   Spend time together, talk with each other, share a meal with each other, be there for each other….my friend Jesus and your friend Jesus wants to do the same with us.  Jesus wants to spend time with us, but we need to make time for him.   No friendship can survive with a few tweets or messages a month or a year.  Jesus wants more.   He wants to have a meal with us…..here at the Eucharist.  This Holy Meal has been set before us by God Himself and the food we share is His Divine Presence.  To be friends with Jesus means we give up as much for others as he gives up for us.  Jesus loves us so much that He gives us everything possible and then says to go and do it to all we meet.  To be Jesus’ friend is to befriend every person in the world as He does.   Jesus excludes no one from His friendship.  We exclude ourselves; we keep Him at a distance; we think we don’t need him.  Yet, whether we want to admit it or not, we do.

The friendship that Jesus calls us to is not a friendship of connivence. He demands from us a commitment.  It is not easy to be a friend of Jesus because he calls us to love as unconditionally as He loves.  We need to love ourselves as Jesus loves us; we need to love others as Jesus loves them, and we need to love Jesus with everything we have.  In Corinthians 13, we are told that without love we are nothing.  Christian love is patient, kind, forgiving, not inflated, and the list continues. 

As we approach the end of the Easter season in two weeks with the Solemnity of Pentecost, let us beg the Spirit of God to grant us all the grace to celebrate being the friends of Jesus.  May the Spirit of the Living God enflame our hearts the love of God that transformed the Cross into the sign of our hope and the symbol of His Love.

 

Come, Divine Spirit of Christ and teach us how to love.

Thank you for calling us your friends.  Teach us to live as your friends.

May we share the Love that you have for us with all we know and meet.

Divine Spirit, light our hearts on the fire of love.

May we have the strength to Love as Jesus loves us

Amen.

 

 

In a reflection that I was reading about this week’s second reading, the author ended with a question:  How has God’s love changed my life?  To be honest, when I first saw it, I drew a blank.  I know this is a question that I really need to sit with and I invite you this week to do the same.  In today’s first reading, we see how God’s love changed the Church by providing a replacement for Judas.    The Spirit of God guided Peter and the other apostles to provide for leadership and a person to witness to Jesus.  Obviously, Matthias must have known Jesus and had been with him since the beginning.  He had a relationship with Jesus as friend, Lord and Savior.  Jesus’s love for him and the love Matthias witnessed on the Cross changed his life.

However, that still does not answer my question.   How has God’s love changed my life?  The most basic change for me was a realization that Jesus wasn’t something I read about in a theology book or in the catechism, but a real and living person who continues to be as alive as he was 2000 + years ago.  His presence is as real today and he continues to call people to follow Him.  This Jesus knows me; and He knows you.  Jesus want to be so connected to us that he became one like this.  Jesus loved us with perfect love.  On the Cross, he gave His all for me and for you.  By rising again, he restored our relationship with Him as had been intended since the beginning.

How has God’s love changed me life?  He has been there for me in the hardest of times.  At funerals, I often talk about the dark valley of the 23^rd psalm and how David may have based this on a dangerous road outside Jerusalem which goes in and out of dark places and was known for the thieves that stalked it.  In all our lives, there are dark valleys and He is right there besides us……I know because He has been there with me.  His Love has surrounded me with light and gave me the courage to go on.  As I have let Jesus become more my friend than an idea, I have found a peace that lasts no matter what.  As I have allowed myself to be closer to Him, the joy that He gives has grown.    He want to do the same for you.

How has God’s love changed my life?  In more ways than I can say, and He has done the same for you.  May our prayer this week before Pentecost be that the Spirit inspire us and give us the vision and courage to proclaim that Jesus has changed our lives and the fire to tell everyone we meet how Jesus’s love has changed our lives.