3RD SUNDAY YEAR C ~ MAY 4, 2025
DO WE LOVE THE LORD?
St. Pope Leo the Great is quoted; “My dear brethren, there is no doubt that the Son of God took our human nature into so close a union with himself that one and the same Christ is present, not only in the firstborn of all creation, but in all his saints as well. The head cannot be separated from the members, nor the members from the head. Not in this life, it is true, but only in eternity will God be all in all, yet even now he dwells, whole and undivided, in his temple the Church. Such was his promise to us when he said: “See, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” And so all that the Son of God did and taught for the world’s reconciliation is not for us simply a matter of history. Here and now, we experience his power at work among us. Born of a virgin mother by the action of the Holy Spirit, Christ keeps his Church spotless and makes her fruitful by the inspiration of the same Spirit. In baptismal regeneration she brings forth children for God beyond all numbering. These are the sons of whom it is written: They are born not of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. In Christ Abraham’s posterity is blessed, because in him the whole world receives the adoption of sons, and in him the patriarch becomes the father of all nations through the birth, not from human stock but by faith, of the descendants that were promised to him. From every nation on earth, without exception, Christ forms a single flock of those he has sanctified, daily fulfilling the promise he once made: I have other sheep, not of this fold, whom it is also ordained that I shall lead; and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.
Although it was primarily to Peter that he said: “Feed my sheep”, yet the one Lord guides all the pastors in the discharge of their office and leads to rich and fertile pastures all those who come to the rock. There is no counting the sheep who are nourished with his abundant love, and who are prepared to lay down their lives for the sake of the good shepherd who died for them. But it is not only the martyrs who share in his passion by their glorious courage; the same is true, by faith, of all who are reborn through baptism. That is why we are to celebrate the Lord’s paschal sacrifice with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The leaven of our former malice is thrown out, and a new creature is filled and inebriated with the Lord himself. For the effect of our sharing in the body and blood of Christ is to change us into what we receive. As we have died with him and have been buried and raised to life with him, so we bear him within us, both in body and in spirit, in everything we do”.
The season of Easter is the season of celebrating life not the death, because our Lord has won the victory over the death. He is the author of life and came to give life and life in abundance as St. John says. The New Testament contains many accounts describing the experience of the original disciples of Jesus as they found faith through their encounter with their Risen Lord. The writers of the gospels are so certain of the meetings that laid the foundations of Christian faith that they do not attempt to harmonise the details of the stories they are handing on. They pass on these stories to share the wonder of finding faith and new purpose through an encounter with the Lord’s triumph – a wonder that can hardly be captured by a single account. As our Easter liturgies recall these stories, we are like a family group listening to one another sharing personal recollections of a past event that meant a great deal to the whole family. Given from different points of view, these recollections bring a fare, full appreciation of what took place. Last Sunday we heard the story as it was recalled in the community of John’s gospel, Jesus appeared to his disciples and breathed on them the Spirit with the words “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And the dialogue with St. Peter, is a wake up call for us to stand for the Lord.
St. Tertullian by fighting against the heresies of his time, has shown us the way to show our love for Jesus, however sometimes we may be like Judas Iscariot who didn’t want to be with the Lord neither part of his mission. He writes, Our Lord Jesus Christ himself declared what he was, what he had been, how he was carrying out his Father’s will & what obligations he demanded of men. This he did during his earthly life, either publicly to the crowds or privately to his disciples. Twelve of these he picked out to be his special companions, appointed to teach the nations.
One of them fell from his place. The remaining eleven were commanded by Christ, as he was leaving the earth to return to the Father after his resurrection, to go and teach the nations and to baptize them into the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The apostles cast lots and added Matthias to their number, in place of Judas, as the twelfth apostle. The authority for this action is to be found in a prophetic psalm of David. After receiving the power of the Holy Spirit which had been promised to them, so that they could work miracles and proclaim the truth, they first bore witness to their faith in Jesus Christ and established churches throughout Judea. They then went out into the whole world and proclaimed to the nations the same doctrinal faith.
They set up churches in every city. Other churches received from them a living transplant of faith and the seed of doctrine, and through this daily process of transplanting they became churches. They therefore qualify as apostolic churches by being the offspring of churches that are apostolic. Every family was traced back to its origins. That is why we can say that all these great churches constitute that one original Church of the apostles; for it is from them that they all come. They are all primitive, all apostolic, because they are all one. They bear witness to this unity by the peace in which they all live, the brotherhood, which is their name, the fellowship to which they are pledged. The principle on which these associations are based is common tradition by which they share the same sacramental bond. The only way in which we can prove what the apostles taught—that is to say, what Christ revealed to them—is through those same churches. They were founded by the apostles themselves, who first preached to them by what is called the living voice and later by means of letters. The Lord had said clearly in former times: I have many more things to tell you, but you cannot endure them now. But he went on to say: When the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into the whole truth. Thus, Christ shows us that the apostles had full knowledge of the truth, for he had promised that they would receive the whole truth through the Spirit of truth. His promise was certainly fulfilled, since the Acts of the Apostles prove that the Holy Spirit came down on them.
The love of Jesus enters our hearts to transform us into new creation and people who belong to his kingdom. How true the following story is to understand his unconditional love?
Once there was an old lock shop amidst the narrow streets of city. People would buy locks and keys and sometimes even come to get duplicate keys for their locks.
There was a heavy hammer in the locksmith’s shop which was sometimes used to break locks. The hammer often wondered, “What is the quality of these small keys that they can open such strong locks in a jiffy whereas I don’t know how many blows I would take to open that same lock.”
One day, when the shop was closed, the hammer asked the small key, “How are you able to open even stubborn locks with such ease? I am strong and can’t do this.”
The key replied, “You use force to open the locks, you hit them and by doing so, the lock doesn’t open but breaks. Whereas I do not hurt them, rather I enter it’s heart and it immediately opens.”
Something similar happens in human life. if we really want to win someone over, make them ours, then we must get into that person’s heart. It is possible to force someone to do something, but we do not open their locks in their mind or heart, we break it. Doing so we destroy the person, rather than winning someone’s heart with love. Everything that can be achieved by force can also be achieved by love but everything that can be achieved by love cannot be achieved by force.
The proclamation made by Peter and the Apostles does not merely consist of words: fidelity to Christ affects their whole lives, which are changed, given a new direction, and it is through their lives that they bear witness to the faith and to the proclamation of Christ. In today’s Gospel, Jesus asks Peter three times to feed his flock, to feed it with his love, and he prophesies to him: “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go”. We should all ask ourselves: How do I bear witness to Christ through my faith? Do I have the courage of Peter and the other Apostles, to think, to choose and to live as a Christian, obedient to God? In God’s great plan, every detail is important, even those who live their faith with simplicity in everyday family relationships, work relationships, friendships. There are the saints of every day, the “hidden” saints, a sort of “middle class of holiness”, to which we can all belong. Let us all remember this: one cannot proclaim the Gospel of Jesus without the tangible witness of one’s life. Those who listen to us and observe us must be able to see in our actions what they hear from our lips and so give glory to God! Saint Francis of Assisi once said, “preach the Gospel and, if necessary, use words. Preaching with your life, with your witness”.
A well-respected scholar and avowed atheist was speaking at a large outdoor picnic. He spoke for two and a half hours attempting to prove that the resurrection of Jesus was false. He quoted scholar after scholar and book after book. He concluded that since there was no such thing as the historical resurrection, the religious tradition of the church was groundless and emotional nonsense. He said it was based on a relationship with a risen Jesus, who never rose from the dead in any literal sense. He then asked if there were any questions. After about thirty seconds, an old preacher stood up. “Sir, I have one question,” he said, as all eyes turned toward him. He reached into his sack lunch and pulled out an apple he had been eating. “My question is a simple question,” he said before taking another bite out of the apple.
He continued, “I haven’t read all the books you have, and I can’t recite the Scriptures in the original Greek.” He took a couple more bites of the apple and said, “I don’t know a thing about Niebuhr and Heidegger.”
He finished the apple and said, “All I want to know is…this apple I just finished, was it tart or sweet?” The speaker paused for a moment and answered in exemplary scholarly fashion, “I cannot possibly answer that question, for I haven’t tasted your apple.” The white-haired preacher dropped the core of his apple into his crumpled paper bag and said calmly, “Neither have you tasted my Jesus.”
Easter stories are there help us to taste Jesus who has risen from the dead to make sharers of his resurrection “Taste and see that the LORD is good! Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in Him! If you have, rejoice in the hope of the resurrection that your faith in Him brings”, as the Psalmist says (Psalm 34:8-9). And St. John says in his First Letter “And we know that the Son of God has come, and He has given us understanding so that we can know the true God. And now we live in fellowship with the true God because we live in fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the only true God, and He is eternal life” (1 John 5:20)
Isn’t an amazing experience to be called “we are an Easter people and Alleluia is our slogan” according to St. Augustine of Hippo? The Easter people always stand for the Lord as remembering the great love and sacrifice of the Lord. Is it easy to follow Jesus in the secular world? Our answer could be “no” but the Lord helps us to stand for him because nothing separates us from his love. (please read Romans 8).
During this month of May, we can follow two greatest personalities; St. Joseph who’s feast we are going to celebrate on May 1st as “St. Joseph the Worker”. He is best known for being a silent righteous man and a protector of the Saviour who stood strong in the midst of trials and tribulation. The second personality we can follow is Blessed Virgin Mary as we observe the month of May as month of the Rosary. She knew her cultural problems but stood for her faith and later under the foot of the Cross to encourage and strengthen her Son in his suffering. Do we stand for him?
In the First Reading, what strikes us is the strength of Peter and the other Apostles. In response to the order to be silent, no longer to teach in the name of Jesus, no longer to proclaim his message, they respond clearly: “We must obey God, rather than men”. And they remained undeterred even when flogged, ill-treated, and imprisoned. Peter and the Apostles proclaimed courageously, fearlessly, what they had received: the Gospel of Jesus. And we? Are we capable of bringing the Word of God into the environment in which we live? Do we know how to speak of Christ, of what he represents for us, in our families, among the people who form part of our daily lives? Faith is born from listening and is strengthened by proclamation. (please read 2 Timothy 4:1-6) But let us take a further step: the proclamation made by Peter and the Apostles does not merely consist of words: fidelity to Christ affects their whole lives, which are changed, given a new direction, and it is through their lives that they bear witness to the faith and to the proclamation of Christ.
The passage from the Book of Revelation speaks to us of worship: the myriads of angels, all creatures, the living beings, the elders, prostrate themselves before the Throne of God and of the Lamb that was slain, namely Christ, to whom be praise, honour and glory. I would like all of us to ask ourselves this question: “do we worship the Lord? Do we turn to God only to ask him for things, to thank him, or do we also turn to him to worship him? Worshipping the Lord means giving him the place that he must have; worshipping the Lord means stating, believing – not only by our words – that he alone truly guides our lives; worshipping the Lord means that we are convinced before him that he is the only God, the God of our lives, the God of our history. (Please read Revelation 6)
“Do you love me?”. “Are you, my friend?” (cf. Jn 21, 15ff.). The question is addressed to a man who, despite his solemn declarations, let himself be gripped by fear and so had denied. “Do you love me?”; “Are you, my friend?”. The question is addressed to me and to each one of us, to all of us: if we take care not to respond too hastily and superficially it impels us to look within ourselves, to re-enter ourselves. “Do you love me?”; “Are you my friend?”. The One who scrutinizes hearts (Rom 8:27), makes himself a beggar of love and questions us on the one truly essential issue, a premiss and condition for feeding his sheep, his lambs, his Church. May every ministry be based on this intimacy with the Lord; living from him is the measure of our ecclesial service, which is expressed in the readiness to obey, to humble ourselves, as we heard in the Letter to the Philippians, and for the total gift of self (2:6-11).
Moreover, the consequence of loving the Lord is giving everything, truly everything, even our life for him. This is what must distinguish our pastoral ministry; it is the litmus test that tells us how deeply we have embraced the gift received in responding to Jesus’ call, and how closely bound we are to the individuals and communities that have been entrusted to our care. We are not the expression of a structure or of an organizational need: even with the service of our authority we are called to be a sign of the presence and action of the Risen Lord; thus, to build up the community in brotherly love. Not that this should be taken for granted: even the greatest love, in fact, when it is not constantly nourished, weakens and fades away. Not for nothing did the Apostle Paul recommend: “take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you guardians, to feed the church of the Lord which he obtained with his own Son’s blood” (Acts 20:28).
Just as it did Peter, Jesus’ insistent and heartfelt question can leave us pained and more aware of the weakness of our freedom, threatened as it is by thousands of interior and exterior forms of conditioning that all too often give rise to bewilderment, frustration, and even disbelief. These are not of course the sentiments and attitudes that the Lord wants to inspire; rather, the enemy, the devil, takes advantage of them to isolate us in bitterness, complaint and despair. Peter, purified in the crucible of forgiveness could say humbly, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you” (Jn 21:17). I am sure that we can all say this with heartfelt feeling. And Peter, purified, urges us in his First Letter to tend “the flock of God… not by constraint but willingly, not for shameful gain but eagerly, not as domineering over those in your charge but being examples to the flock” (1 Pet 5:2-3).
Let me conclude my reflection with this story which help us to understand our love for Jesus.
In a village, lived a couple with their son. Their son was irritated all the time and used to get angry over little talks. Everyday, he would get into quarrels with people in his neighborhood. He didn’t have any friends. His parents got worried about him. One day a monk arrived in village who was very famous. When the parents heard about him, they took their son to see him and said, “This is our son, he gets very angry and has no control over his anger. He fights with everyone. Please help him.” The monk replied, “Leave your son with me for the day today.”
After the parents left, the monk said to the boy, “Son! I will give you a task. Will you do that?” The boy agreed. The monk smiled and said, “OK then, go prepare two heaps of clay and shape two hearts from that clay.” The boy found this work somewhat strange, but he started preparing the two hearts out of clay. While making the hearts, he got annoyed many times in his mind. He started thinking, “I have come here to give up my habit of getting angry, but this monk is using me for such work…” but he somehow continued to work and prepared the two clay hearts. He took those hearts to monk and said, “Here are the two hearts. Now, tell me the solution for my problem.” The monk said, “I know very well why you have come here. But first complete this work for me, then I will do something about your anger.” The boy asked, “Ok. Tell me what to do now?” “Take one of these clay hearts and go to the potter and ask him to heat it well in the furnace and then bring it back.”, said the monk. The boy did as he said and came back. The monk said to him, “Now, paint this heart with whatever color you want.” The boy painted that heart red. After applying color, the heart started looking very beautiful. When the boy saw the heart that he had worked hard to prepare, he was very happy and started thinking, “I will take it to my house and decorate my room.” He happily went to the monk and showed the heart, he said, “Look how beautiful this heart looks after I painted it.” “Yeah, it looks so beautiful. After all, you worked so hard to on it. But now you must hit this heart with a hammer.”, saying this, the monk handed a hammer to the boy. The boy didn’t want to break it but somehow controlling his anger, he attacked that heart with the hammer. The heart was broken. The boy felt very sad. He said to the monk, “My whole day’s hard work is wasted.”
But the monk did not pay heed to him and gave him the other heart made of clay and said, “Now strike this heart with the hammer.” The boy did the same but with the blow of the hammer, the mark of the hammer emerged on the heart, but the blow didn’t break heart. The boy was surprised to see this but couldn’t understand why the monk had asked him to do so. He thought that the monk was mad and said, “My whole day was spent here in useless work. Now I am not going to stay here another moment. I am going.” The monk stopped him and said, “before you go, at least try to understand meaning of what you did.” The boy stopped. Now, the monk began to explain to him, saying, “Son! The heart of clay you were working on. It was a representation of the real heart. Just as you heat the heart of clay in the heat of fire, similarly your heart gets heated in the furnace of your anger. You feel like you are standing firmly in front of the world, but it is not so. Your hardened heart will not be able to withstand even one blow of the hammer of life and will be shattered. In this case you will not be able to recover. To bear the pain and sorrow of life, you must soften your heart. Then whenever any sorrow comes, it will influence your heart for some time, but it won’t break. Rather, it will get better in a few days. Anger does more harm to yourself than it does to others. So, stop being angry. Place love and forgiveness in your heart, make it humble.” The boy understood and promised the monk that from then on he would control his anger and improve his behavior.
Do we love Jesus?
Other Sermons In This Series
29th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year ~ October 16, 2022
October 14, 2022
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year A ~ August 27, 2023
August 25, 2023
30th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C ~ October 23, 2022
October 21, 2022