SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER - MAY 5, 2024

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. We were given this truth from the very beginning of our creation, instructed in it through the Scriptures, and placed it at the forefront of our minds when reminding ourselves of the inherent dignity of all people. What does this mean? Does it mean that God looks like us, that He shares our features, that He sees the world the same way we do, that He communicates just as we can? Clearly not - God is wholly indescribable to us as mere human beings. However, the “image and likeness” we all have is one simple thing: love. God is Love. The capacity and ability to love or to be ordered to love is uniquely divine, and God has determined to share this divine attribute with us as His creation so that we may love Him in return.

READ THIS SUNDAY'S MESSAGE

If we could encapsulate everything we know about God into a single phrase, it would be the one taken from this Sunday’s second reading from the first letter of John: God is love. This may sound simple or trite, but to the early Christian community, this meant everything, mainly because they were primary witnesses to the perfect act of love in the death of Christ. Humans unfortunately have such a basic misunderstanding of the concept of love whenever we misconstrue it as a movement of the heart, an emotion, or a drive to feel good in the presence of others. In reality, love is an action, a firm resolve to do everything in your power to will the good of another person for no other reason than an appreciation for them as an individual. Love is not contingent on one’s personality, one’s beauty, one’s merit, or any other exterior characteristic; love is contingent on recognizing the inherent dignity of another person, even with all their flaws in full effect. In other words, to love is to recognize the image and likeness of God in another person. John knew love. In his Gospel, he always refers to himself as the “beloved” because he understood that Christ willed his good for no other reason than the fact that he was made in the image and likeness of God. He was one of His own. One of the loveliest stories of ancient Christianity is shared to us by St. Jerome, who claimed that as the bishop, the Apostle John would say Mass for his community - breaking bread, reading the Scriptures, and opening up the Scriptures through his homilies. Jerome claims that in his old age, John’s homilies were the same every single time they gathered together for Mass. He would rise up before his congregation and simply say “Love one another as Christ loved you.” For us Christians, this simple homily is enough to drive us to model Christ within our own lives through love.

Christ reiterates in this Sunday’s Gospel a crucial message: “Remain in my love.” Love one another as Christ loved us. To love is to assimilate with the other; when we empathize with our neighbors, when we accept them in their entirety, with all of their flaws and their imperfections, and we love them regardless, we assimilate with them. We know them intimately, and we can begin to recognize the intricate details of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God. God assimilated with us out of love when He became man. We assimilate with God when we consume the Eucharist. To love is to unify, to be made one, to be made holy. Love is the only way we can taste divinity in this life, and love is all that will be found in the next life. All of the Law, all of the Prophets, all of Christ’s miracles and messages and movements were driven by one simple rule for us to follow: love one another as he loves us.