6th Sunday of Easter 2026 - Deeply in love with Jesus Christ

 

There’s a catholic philosopher and author I very much enjoy named Dr. Peter Kreeft. Dr. Kreeft is a professor of philosophy at Boston College. He’s a convert to Catholicism from Calvinism, and the author of over eighty books, including a spiritual autobiography that came out a few months ago. I got to meet Dr. Kreeft and have dinner with him when he came to give a lecture at our seminary about 10 years ago.

Dr. Kreeft tells the story about a time he was invited to give a talk at a small monastery up in Connecticut.  And at the end of his visit, the monastery’s holy abbot approached Dr. Kreeft and said, “I’d like to ask you a question, Doctor. And it’s the same question we ask every visitor to our monastery. And the question is, “If you could ask God to give any gift possible to these monks, what would you ask for?”

Dr. Kreeft, thought about it for a moment, and said, “I would ask God to make every single one of you fall totally in love with Jesus Christ for the rest of your life. That is the gift for which I would ask.” At his answer, the abbot smiled and some of the monks began to chuckle.  Not thinking it was a terrible answer, Dr. Kreeft asked the abbot why the monks were laughing at him. And the abbot said, we are not laughing at you or your response, it’s just that last month, Mother Theresa visited us, and she gave the exact same answer: that you may fall totally in love with Jesus Christ.

Why would Dr. Kreeft consider this the greatest gift you could wish for someone? Why do Mother Theresa and the Saints consider falling totally in love with Jesus Christ the greatest of all gifts? Why would they say that if you could give one gift to your spouse or child, one gift to your neighbor, one gift to a stranger, to the sick, imprisoned, or orphan, the best gift you could want for them is to love Jesus Christ? What’s behind this answer? I promise it’s not false piety. They are serious, dead serious. It’s what I want for all of you more than anything.

The reason Dr. Kreeft, Mother Teresa, and the saints say that the greatest gift is to fall totally in love with Jesus Christ is precisely what today’s Gospel reveals. In this passage, Jesus shows us what loving him actually means, and what flows from it.

First, notice that Jesus treats love for him as the center of the Christian life: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” He does not say merely, “If you admire me,” or “If you find my teaching interesting.” He speaks of love. Why? Because Christianity is not merely a moral system or a set of religious ideas. It is a living relationship with Jesus Christ. To love him is the heart of everything.

And then Jesus shows why that love is the greatest gift. Whoever loves Jesus is drawn into the very life of God. “The Spirit of Truth will be with you” “He remains with you, and will be in you.” You are in me and I in you.” “Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father.” “I will love him and reveal myself to him.” This is extraordinary. To love Jesus Christ is not merely to become a better person, though it does make us better. It is to enter into communion with the Blessed Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. To have a living relationship with God who Is a Communion of Love.

That is why the saints are so serious about this. If a person falls in love with Jesus Christ, then obedience ceases to be mere external rule-following. His commandments are no longer just burdens imposed from outside. Love transforms obedience into a participation in the life of God. Love makes life possible.

And Jesus promises even more: “if you love me, I will not leave you orphans”. Those are deeply consoling words, because one of the deepest fears in the human heart is the fear of being abandoned. Have you ever loved someone who didn’t love you back? It hurts.  Have you ever given your heart, your loyalty, your trust, only to be ignored, rejected, or abandoned? The human heart longs for more than the wound of loneliness and abandonment. Again, we were made for communion, for love that endures.

And so Jesus speaks addresses this directly: I will not leave you orphans. In other words: I will not leave you alone, to fend for yourself. I will not leave you to wander through life aimless, confused, in darkness, trying to make sense of everything by your own strength.

“I am with you always” the Lord says, and he is through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The one who loves Christ receives not merely good advice, or an inspiring example from the distant past, but the living presence of God dwelling within him. The Holy Spirit is with those who love Jesus Christ, reminding us of all that Jesus teaches, because God knows, we are prone to forget. The Holy Spirit comforts us, because God knows, we are prone to suffering and trial. The Holy Spirit convicts us because God knows how easily our fervor for pursuing holiness can diminish.. The Holy Spirit guides because God knows how easily we become lost amidst the confusion and chaos of the world.

Loving Jesus Christ is the key to everything worth having. It’s the key to a happy marriage, it’s the key to a healthy priesthood, it’s the key to withstanding the social pressures that bombard the young, particularly on social media. It’s the key to discovering who you were meant to be, to unlocking the potential of your mind and heart and unique soul.

When we understand the importance of loving Jesus Christ, we come to understand what motivated the saints to serve God with such heroic virtue. Love of Jesus: it’s what impelled St. Francis to embrace the leper even though he was initially repulsed, it impelled St. Vincent de Paul to care for the plague victims at the risk of his life. It impelled St. Francis Xavier Cabrini to leave her native Italy to serve the immigrants here in the United States, and St. Junipero Sera and St. Rose Philippine Duchesne to educate and serve the Native Americans, and St. Mother Theresa to serve the poorest of the poor, St. Maximilian Kolbe to take the place of the concentration camp prisoner about to be executed.

Love of Jesus Christ transforms ordinary people to do extraordinary things, and it can for us as well, if we let it, if we make loving Jesus our greatest aim.

How can we grow in our love for Jesus? “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” This is where today’s Gospel begins: Breaking the commandments is not just breaking rules, sin turns the heart away from the beloved. Sin extinguishes the fire of love. Obedience, however, proves love, reinforces love, seeks the beloved in the face of obstacles.

Prayer, of course, increases love because love requires presence. You do not fall in love with a person you never spend time with or talk to or listen to or spend time pondering.

Charitable service increases love. Jesus identifies himself with others: “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” Service trains the heart away from selfishness, which is the great enemy of love. It stretches the soul. It makes us imitate the one who “came not to be served but to serve.”

The Sacraments, especially the Eucharist and Confession increases love: for confession restores the union that what was weakened or lost by sin; in Communion, we become what we receive, Jesus Christ who is love incarnate.

We come to holy mass seeking to love, to express love, to grow in love, to fall deeply in love with Jesus, that love may guide us every day, in all of our relationships, in our brokenness, in our trials, that love may heal us, sustain, transform us, animate us for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2023 - Extraordinary Time

 

The Christmas season has ended, and we’ve returned to the observance of Ordinary Time. Each of the seasons of the Church year certainly has its own spirituality and themes—a rhythm that is to mark our lives.

During Advent, the church prepares for the coming of Christ and during Advent we are to become quieter, more reflective, meditative like a mother anticipating the birth of her child, like Blessed Mary anticipating the birth of her son. During Christmas of course we celebrate Christ’s birth with hymns of praise. We give gifts, we gather with family and friends in a spirit of cheer and generosity, always with an eye to the needs of the poor whose condition Christ shared—born into the straw poverty of the Bethlehem stable. 

Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday, February 22nd this year, is a season of intensified prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and concrete acts of penance; we unite ourselves to Jesus in the desert, his Passion and suffering on the cross, and we meditate on his great love for us throughout all that he suffered.

Then during Easter, of course we celebrate the Resurrection; we focus on courageously proclaiming that Christ is risen, alleluia, and breaking the bonds of all that keeps us from proclaiming and living Christ’s victory over sin and death.

But now we find ourselves once again in Ordinary Time. And during ordinary time we focus on the ordinary life of the Christian. But that’s not boring or unnoteworthy. There is holiness to be found and practiced in the ordinary dimensions of life. There is holiness to be found in cooking and cleaning and conversations and working and resting and family life and visits to the grocery and hardware stores and the doctor’s office and civic life, in aches and pains, and successes and failures. There is holiness to be found and practiced in everyday life, in ordinary day-to-day life. 

Our Christian faith makes the life of the ordinary Christian extraordinary in a number of ways.

Firstly, unlike those without faith, Christians live conscious of God of with us throughout all of life. We celebrated at Christmas—that Christ is Emmanuel—God-with-us. And He is. He is with us in our trials, in our sufferings, in our poverty, in our fears, in failures, and in the ordinary. That gives us extraordinary and supernatural consolation, comfort, strength, and guidance.

And we live not just conscious of God. But the Christian lives with God truly present in his soul. The Christian becomes a walking tabernacle, a divine temple. This is extraordinary. For the Christian is not simply flesh and blood, but the baptized Christian, with God dwelling in his soul brings God into everything he does. Our lives become extensions of the dominion of God, prisms for the light of God to shine from within, antenna to receive and transmit the Word of God in the world. God is made known, his divine life and power become detectable through us. 

Secondly, unlike the rest of the world, the Christian lives grounded in the Truth of God’s moral law. The Christian seeks to rid themselves of what humans shouldn’t be doing and to do what humans should be doing. Christians restrain ourselves from what is forbidden and do what is commanded by God himself. Christians observes all the “thou shalt nots”—observing the moral law—and also seek the perfection of virtue and the cultivation of the fruits and gifts of the holy spirit. 

And this is extraordinary. For the ordinary state is just to follow our feelings. Just do what everybody else is doing, accept the mainstream values, tolerate the breaking-down of society.  That’s normal, that’s expected, that’s how to fit in. But the Christian is called to do the opposite of the ordinary. Not to imitate the world, but to imitate Christ. Not to fall into the depravity and corruption of the mainstream, but to resist it; not to tolerate evil, but to be a force of Good, to draw souls away from evil and toward God. 

The Christian vocation is anything but ordinary. Nothing is more unexpected than the Christian authentically living the faith. When you observe a Christian making use of a spiritual gift you recognize that something extraordinary is happening. When a Christian speaks in a prophetic way, or engages in selfless works of charity, or organizes people to accomplish something for God that they could not accomplish on their own, that is extraordinary. And we’re called to do these things every day, to live extraordinarily every day. I can’t think of anything more a pastor would rather see than parishioners bringing forth their gifts in service to the mission of the parish in extraordinary ways. 

A final way Christians are extraordinary is the way by which we suffer. All people suffer. All people get sick, age, and experience the effects of mortality. Suffering is ordinary. But Christians can suffer in an extraordinary way when we unite our sufferings with Christ, in what is called redemptive suffering or reparative suffering, by what is called “offering up” our sufferings.  

When Christians consciously, intentionally unite our ordinary sufferings to Christ, accepting the share in the cross of Christ, we are able do something that is eminently extraordinary. We are able to be a conduit of healing and grace for the world. We can say, “Lord, let my suffering be for some good” and that prayer is heard by God. Through redemptive suffering we can make amends for sins against God, remitting the time we would spend in purgatory, doing penance for others, and winning grace for the conversion of hardened hearts. 

Ordinary Time: it might seem boring to some, but if you are conscious of your mission, your identity, and the opportunities for holiness, it won’t be anything less than extraordinary. For the glory of God and salvation of souls.