Sixth Sunday of Easter
We are loved
During the last week we held the Tasmanian Catholic Youth Festival in both the north and the south of the state. The Festival had two components, sessions with high school students during the day, and then an evening event in the Cathedral and Church of the Apostles in Launceston.
The theme of the youth festival was taken from Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation to young people of 2019. Pope Francis’s words, “You are alive, fall in love”, formed the basis of the theme.
Students were invited to consider what they have fallen in love with, and to reflect on how loving something seizes their imagination and becomes the focus and inspiration to their life.
They were then led to consider the ultimate source of love. Pope Francis said in his exhortation to young people: “The very first truth I would like to tell each of you is this: God loves you”. He then added, “It makes no difference whether you have already heard or not. I want to remind you of it. God loves you”.
We are familiar with this declaration that God loves us, we have heard it many times, and it can lose its potency. While we do not deny its truth it can be passed over as a simple truism. Yet, when experienced in a deeply personal way it is life-changing. For young people this declaration is an invitation to experience the reality of this love.
Through a stirring talk by internationally acclaimed singer and songwriter Fr Rob Galea from Sandhurst Diocese; through the testimony of some young people; through music and prayer, the young people were encouraged to open their hearts to the love of God.
This Christian proclamation of the love of God for each person only comes alive when it is experienced.
The youth festival caused me to look at my own life and to reflect on my own experience of the love of God. I looked back over my life and considered moments when the love of God for me was something experienced immediately and tangibly. I could identify a number of quite significant moments, with one in particular being a powerful turning point in my life. I shared this with the young people.
God loves us, and no doubt each of us can share their story of how they have experienced this love. Reflecting on our own experience we can also see how this experience has touched and shaped our life. Love, to be real, is felt and wonderfully changes us.
This weekend the Gospel reading takes up this theme. We heard that Jesus said to his disciples, “As the Father had loved me, so I have loved you”.
With these words the disciples could reflect on their experience of the love of God being mediated to them through Christ. No doubt they knew that Christ loved them. I am sure that could immediately point to moments when they tasted this love in a very personal way. These words of Christ may have stimulated their own appreciation of how important and indeed life-changing this love of Christ was for them. St John never tired of speaking of his realisation that the love of God for us was revealed in Jesus Christ.
And then Jesus simply encouraged them: “Remain in my love”. He invites them to stay within the ambit of my love. This encouragement to the disciples is also an encouragement for us.
It is like standing in the sunlight, especially on a cold day. We feel the warmth flooding through our bodies. We sense the comfort of the light being radiated to us. In the sunlight we see things clearly and distinctively. To then move into the shadows we lose the immediate sense of warmth, the light is less, and shadows prevent things from being as sharp and clear.
It is Mother’s Day today and we all think of our mothers. On this day the predominant theme that is reflected in the culture is an appreciation of the love of mothers for their children. We think of our mother’s love for us. We know this love because we have tasted this love. A mother’s love is critical to the earliest growth of a child. To grow up knowing that we are loved provides a sense of security, of worth, of assurance.
Pope Francis in his exhortation to young people quotes a text from the prophet Isaiah:
Does a woman forget her baby at the breast, or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget I will never forget you (Is 49:15).
These are stirring words. God will never forget us.
Pope Francis also quotes the Prophet Isaiah saying, “See I have inscribed you on the palms of my hand” (Is 49:6). I suppose this is like the person who has the name of their beloved tattooed on their body – though I am not advocating this. What it declares is that God has a person love for each of us.
This is one of the most revolutionary claims of our faith. God is not distant, uninterested and uninvolved. God takes a personal interest in each of us, wherever we are at, whatever is happening in our lives – good or bad. God’s love is constant, steady and sustaining.
The message is simple and clear. We are loved by God. We are loved personally, intimately.
Let us take a moment of quiet reflection on the ways in which this love has been known and experienced.
“As the Father had loved me, so I have loved you”.
Archbishop Julian Porteous
Sunday, 9 May 2021.