6th Easter - Fr. Leo
Last week, I mentioned that the Father loves us infinitely and unconditionally. His love was manifested in his Son, Jesus Christ, who out of love for the Father and for us gave his own life. Jesus did this, not to guilt us into different behavior, but only to affirm the total unconditional love that is God’s love for us.
What brings us into the experience of sharing in this love, is God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. It is the Spirit that comes without our knowing how, like the wind, and draws us into the life of God.
We see this in today’s readings. In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, the people of Samaria have been baptized into the faith, they have become believers, but it was only when Peter and John prayed for them to receive the Holy Spirit, symbolized in the laying on of hands, did their faith become realized in an experience of God’s love. Only the experience of love can teach us what love really is.
The love God shares with us is an ecstatic love. It takes us out of ourselves and gives our full self to God and others just as God the Father gives himself to his Son and his Son makes him Father by giving back the total love of the Father. This love is the exchange of the Holy Spirit, and because God’s love is ecstatic it flows out of the Trinity into us through the Holy Spirit. This is what Jesus promises when he says he is sending another to be with us, an advocate makes our oneness in God real. Jesus wants us to be one in them and thus one in the Father and the Holy Spirit.
As God loves us and shares God’s life with us, its fruit will be in our loving God and others the way God loves us. This work of the Holy Spirit leads us to know the fullness of love, and to live our lives guided by this love, or by living out what this love requires. It is this that makes us holy and filled with the life of God.
Doing what love requires in this new world with Covid-19 calls for new responses to God and to others. Let us pray and contemplate what this may call us too. Let us pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit and the desire to allow God’s spirit to carry out these new commands of love in our time. May the Holy Spirit enkindle our hearts with the fire of God’s love. May God keep the flame of love alive in our hearts!