FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER - MAY 18, 2025

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

How do we know we are truly loved? For most of us, our first experience with recognizing a true and personal love was in the arms of our mothers. At our youngest, we are completely dependent on the care and protection of someone else who loves us. We are at our weakest, and yet there is someone who holds us close, warms us, nourishes us, and gives us a place to rest peacefully. As we grow older and slowly become more in control of ourselves, love is expressed in how others form us, which is most often seen in fathers. They prepare us for when we are ready to go out into the world, because to them, they want nothing more than our success and flourishing. When we reach a certain age, we finally go out into the world, make friends, fall in love, have families of our own, and serve our community. Love is essential at all stages of life.

READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

Love must be taught to us so that we might love unconditionally. Like any virtue, it must be cultivated, and when we are surrounded by love and recognize its presence in our lives, it becomes that much easier for us to love. Love is expressed in different forms, but its foundation is always the same. Whether we love our families, our spouses, our children, our friends, or even strangers, the true way we show love is through self-sacrifice. Throughout the readings from this Sunday, we see the different expressions of love that God shows to His people, and they are all connected to one another. At the Last Supper, Christ gives his disciples one last instruction after Judas leaves. He waited for Judas to leave because he intended that this would be a requirement in the disciples’ ministry after Jesus left them: to bring people into the Truth by loving them in the same way that Christ loved them, which was ultimately what motivated them to follow him. This significant lesson is powerless if we, like Judas, cannot recognize the love and forgiveness God gives us. We can also see this instruction being put into action by the disciples in the first reading. Paul and Barnabas were able to get many to follow them as disciples, but warned them of the consequences of true love: “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God.” This is not because hardships are valuable by their nature, but because they manifest the worth of true love. Our ultimate desire through love is to live in the goodness of others and to give them our entire selves. We hear this is the second reading, as John describes a glimpse of heaven. Despite all of the suffering and hardships that love entails, God will eventually wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, because love ultimately conquers all.