The Ascension of the Lord - Fr. Leo

Beloved, if God so loved us, We must also love one another.  (1st John 4:11)

Jesus reconciles us to God, but also to each other. In God’s world there is only an us, no us-them.  Loving is hard.  Most of all, loving ourselves is most challenging.  Most of us struggle with loving ourselves as we are.  We want to be thinner, younger, or appear younger with cosmetics and dyes.  We want to get all our externals right from portfolio, to lawn, to the clothes we don.  We are never good enough and all things could be better in our world. This thinking leads to individualism and disconnects us from community.  We begin to live for ourselves alone no matter how ‘social’ we may appear.

When we can love our own humanity with all its wonderful imperfections, compassion will be our gift to others and their gift to us.  Then, rather than living isolated in shame, we will live in the wonderful giving and taking that marks our unity with God and others. This will take faith.  Faith in God’s love for us, and through his grace, a true love for ourselves. Once united with God, the divinity we share with Him will unite us with His divinity in others.  There will only be an us-in-God, and never an us and them.

May the Lord increase our faith in Him, in ourselves, and in others.  Calling on the Holy Spirit we pray: Come, Holy Spirit, enkindle in our hearts the fire of your love.  Then we will be recreated, and you shall renew the face of the earth.  Amen.