Homily: Monday - 7th Week of Easter 2016 - Law of the gift

During his 26-year pontificate, Pope Saint John Paul II offered to the Church a vast array of writings, encyclicals, and teachings and the like.  His Pontificate was so jam packed with all these towering theological teachings that it is going to take us decades to understand them and let them sink in.

Yet scholars are beginning to wonder if all of John Paul’s teaching can boil down to what they are calling, “the Law of the Gift”, a term John Paul himself coined: “the Law of the Gift.”

What John Paul meant by “The Law of the Gift” is not a new teaching, per se. Put simply, when we give ourselves away as gift, we receive more than we give.  Meaning in life is discovered, not in gaining possessions, but in giving of oneself. As John Paul put it, one’s own being is confirmed and enhanced in the very measure that one gives it away in love.

In Jesus, we see one who gives himself entirely in obedience to the Father, for the salvation of mankind.

In the Gospel today, the disciples do not seem to understand the “law of the gift” as they profess their faith in Jesus.  “Now we realize that you know everything and that you do not need to have anyone question you. Because of this we believe that you came from God.” They are correct in their profession that Jesus came from God, but corrects them.  In a few hours, they would flee in fear of the cross, they would deny him. So he says, no…you don’t really believe, because if you really believed, you wouldn’t abandon me.

The real reason to believe in Him he says is because of the Father’s abiding presence in him which is manifested in his total obedience to the Father’s will. He fulfills the law of the gift and because of this the Father is in Him and works in Him.

Jesus again shows that mature faith is not a matter of giving Jesus lip service.  Not all that call Him Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who “do the will of the Father”— giving yourself away in love.

To give ourselves away in love in service and care, leads to happiness, to beatitude, now and in eternity.  Pope Francis drew upon this teaching in his recent Apostolic Exhortation, when he said, “Christ proposed as the distinctive sign of his disciples the law of love and the gift of self
for others.”

As we journey towards Pentecost, God will renew us in the spiritual gifts if and only if we are willing to give ourselves away in love and service for the glory of God and salvation of souls.