Good morning. What if today was your last day on earth? How would you want to leave it? What would you say to your most cherished and intimate friends, your children, your spouse? This is precisely what is going on in today’s Gospel. Today’s Gospel reading is the telling of Jesus saying farewell to His disciples. He is telling them of His love for them before ascending to the Father. He is asking them to keep this love alive, for them to likewise love each other and to encourage others to love in the same way. “As the Father loves me, so I love you”
We too are called to do likewise, to love completely and without reservation. Jesus offers us a way to find a boundless sense of joy and happiness through being open to each other in a selfless giving of self as in the way He has shown us to love. It seems simple enough; simply love as He loves us. That simply means to live our lives in loving obedience to what God asks of us.
A boundless love which is committed, selfless, and freely given provides for true joy. A love that is pure and generous is what we are called to give, for it is for love that we exist. Saint Damien offers us a view of this type of love as lived out in his lifelong commitment to serving the leper colony of Molokai. To love in this way means to die to self, to give to others for their sake and not our own, foregoing our own personal wants and needs, giving of our time and our energy, sharing our most prized possessions, letting go of needing to be right, letting go of our need to be in control. Can we meet this challenge? Love not in a way to get something from each other but to give everything of ourselves to our other. Love like that. Make a great day!
Today we recall the good life, gifts, and work of Saint Damien of Molokai.
The print of Father Damien is available through Clarence Jones
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