Intimacy

6th Sunday of Easter – Cycle B

Acts 10:25-26, 34-25, 44-48, Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4, 1 JN 4:7-10, Gospel JN 15:9-17

The Journey of Easter

Have you ever stopped to contemplate the journey of the season of Easter?  We can see this journey if we spend a moment reflecting on the Gospel Readings from the 1st to the last Sunday of Easter.  

• Easter Sunday – Resurrection / Peace be with You
• Divine Mercy – Doubting Thomas – Have Faith
• 3rd Sunday – After Emmaus – Peace be with You
• 4th Sunday – The Good Shepherd
• 5th Sunday – The Vine and the Branches
• 6th Sunday – As the Father has loved me – So I love you
• 7th Sunday – Consecrated in the Truth
• Pentecost – Receive the Holy Spirit

The Joy of Easter

The first 3 Sundays of Easter (including Easter Sunday) focus on the Joy and Shock of the Resurrection.  The recurring message is Peace Be with you, and the reality of Christ’s victory over sin and death.

Intimacy with Christ

The second 3 Sundays of Easter focus on growing in intimacy with Christ – I am the Good Shepherd, I am the Vine.  This is a time when we are invited in our daily lives to grow closer to the heart of Christ in preparation for the mission of Pentecost.

Preparation and Mission

The last 2 Sundays of Easter focus on the Mission of the Church – that we have been called to proclaim the fullness of God’s love to the world.

An Invitation to Intimacy

The readings for the last 2 Sundays have really focused us on growing in intimacy with Christ.  Christ begins by saying that he is the Good Shepherd, that he knows his sheep and his sheep know him, Last week we heard that He is the vine and we are the branches.  Today the readings continue to invite us deeper into a special intimacy with Christ.  To really immerse ourselves into this loving relationship that God invites us into.

What do I mean by intimacy?

In our culture the word intimacy is often confused with intercourse.  While it is true that within marriage intercourse can bring about a sense of intimacy between the couple, intercourse is not the only path to intimacy, nor is it the source of intimacy between persons.

At its heart, intimacy is a time when we experience a special closeness to another, and intense awareness of the other and a communion of will, or purpose.  It is a desire to bring about good for the other.

Who does God share intimacy with?

In the first reading we see that Peter and some of the brothers have gone to the house of Cornelius and witness that God’s desire for intimacy with us shows no partiality – but rather that the Holy Spirit falls onto Cornelius, and that as the Spirit is poured out on him he is compelled to respond – praising God.

God pours out his love with abandon

We should note this action of God in the Scriptures today – there is nothing tentative or half-hearted about how God gives himself to us, you don’t tentatively fall, or pour yourself out – it is a sudden action of total commitment.  This is what the early disciples were astounded with – the suddenness of God’s love. 

St. John deepens this exploration of intimacy in the second reading today.  He says – “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.”

The heart of Christianity is to imitate Christ’s Love

What is the heart of Christianity?  It is to choose to love in a way that imitates the Love of Christ.  This means that the degree to which we are capable of love is a reflection of the degree to which we are able to accept the love from God.  

Our love is rooted in our acceptance of love from God

To the extent that we are able to open up our hearts and accept that God loves us defines the limit to which we can participate in the love of God by sharing that same love with others.  In other words, the degree to which we experience intimacy with Christ is a reflection of how comfortable we are in our relationship with Christ, and how we are able to share that intimacy with others?

Christian Identity is rooted in receiving God’s love

Another way of thinking of this is that your and my identity as Christians is true only to the degree that we can accept and share the love that we receive from Christ with others.

This means that when we are with others we need to “be real” – to be rooted in the truth and recognize the truth of this experience.

Where am I wounded?  Where is God’s love missing?

John goes on to say “Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.” – By this he invites us to examine the areas of our life that are suffering from a drought of this intimacy.  What are the areas of my life that are devoid of God’s love?  These might be areas of woundedness, of hurt – especially in relationships that are not healed.  

• These might be areas of loneliness or abandonment
• These might be areas of condemnation or despair
• Christ invites us into an intimacy with His wounds in each of these areas.  

Wounds of the Hands and Feet

If we are struggling with woundedness – especially in relationship we can unite ourselves to the experience of Thomas from two weeks ago – and entrust our doubts and difficulties into his wounds – his side, his hands and his feet.  He is not afraid of our pain and wants to share it with us.

Wounds of Abandonment

If we are struggling with abandonment and loneliness we can unite ourselves with his time on the Cross and his final prayer – My God, My God, why have you abandoned me and know that Christ understands the depths of our difficulty and is there to walk and pray with us.  Trusting in the Holy Spirit to come and pray with us when our own words are too weak.

Wounds of Condemnation

If we are struggling with condemnation and despair, we can reflect on the condemnation that Christ received from the Priests and the Scribes, and the fact that God was able to use this event to transform all peoples relationship with Him.  So we know that we have a friend who is familiar with this kind of rejection and suffering.

When we do this we move from a place of being unloving to being able to receive love from Christ.

God loves us in our brokenness

“God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.  In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”

The witness of God’s is that he came that we might have life and to have it abundantly.  It is not my action of loving God that is a gift, it is my action of receiving God’s love that is the Gift. Today the readings call us to recognize that God is willing to love us in the midst of our sin and our rejection of Him that we experience the true love from God.  It is the fact that God chooses to suffer for us that completes the witness of His love.  Accepting this Fact is the gift of Intimacy for this season of Love.

Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord, and my Father will love him and we will come to him.

The Gospel

With all of this in mind – listen to the Gospel again.  Jesus says 

“If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love.

"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete.  

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.  

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you.  

The path is the Imitation of Christ

We are connected to God the Father to the degree that we imitate the Love that Christ has for the Father.

Heart of this is Suffering Infused with Joy

As long as we are able to cling to this intimacy with Christ then he will help to place the difficulties of our life into the correct context – that we will experience an underlying Joy in the middle of all of the struggles that we are experiencing.  We can experience deep pain that is infused with a spirit of profound Joy.

To do this is to lay down our life for our friends.  This is the invitation of Christ.

Led to mission  

“I have called you friends, because I have told you  everything I have heard from my Father.  It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, “

We are fully equipped for Mission

Jesus shares himself completely with us – all that he has from the Father – all the gifts, all the commandments, all the love that the Father has from us.  He does this to prepare us for the mission that he has called us to – to go and to bear fruit that will remain.  

To whom is Christ sending you to with this Good News?

When we experience the love of Christ we are led to mission – to help share this love with some person to whom Christ is sending us.  Christ is calling each of us to go and bear fruit.  Who are you being sent to announce the good news to this week?

Set your heart on what is above

NOTE:  Before she died, my sister-in-law asked that I preach her funeral homily.  She lived for 11 years with skin cancer and finally succumbed to it at the end.  I had the privilege of walking with her on her journey to eternal life - it was a joy and an honor to see her grow in holiness and love of God.   

Wisdom 3:1-6,9; Psalm 131, Colossians 3:1-4, John 16:16,18-22

San Damiano CrucifixFor her funeral card Joni chose to use the San Damiano Crucifix, which is a Baptismal Crucifix.  As Christians we show Christ Crucified as the witness of God’s love to the world - of the cross and our obligation as Christian’s to imitate Christ.  If you look closely at the crucifix you will see that there are layers that symbolize the Christian Journey, the outermost layer is ringed with seashells that is symbolic of Baptism, then the next layer in is red - for the passion of our Lord, and the next layer in is black - for the death that we all must enter, and finally, to the innermost layer - which is gold that is symbolic of the heavenly kingdom.

It will be but the blink of an eyeJoni found out that she was in the final stages of her cancer at the end of March.  It took her a couple of days to accept the news that the doctors gave to her, and then she let us know and people began to visit to say their goodbyes and to prepare themselves for her death.  When Mark, Dominic, Sebastian and I said our goodbyes to Joni she hinted at the Gospel today and said that she was looking forward to our reunion after the blink of an eye. 

Pain overlaid with joy - a glimpse of the resurrectionPeople react to the news of death differently.  Joni spent the last month saying goodbye to many of us gathered here today.  It was difficult for her - exhausting at times.  Joni told me “I am in pain, but my life has been infused with joy - the joy that I am experiencing by living in the love of so many people.  I know that this is nothing compared to what awaits me.”  

The suffering of childbirth leads to a greater joyIn the Gospel today Jesus is speaking to the disciples about the pain that they are going to experience as they enter into his death.  The disciples really don’t understand what he is talking about - because they have yet to go through the suffering.  Christ compares the separation that we experience in death to that of childbirth.  To be sure there is pain and suffering - but the focus of childbirth is not on the suffering but on the gift of new life entering into the world.  

Suffering is the test of our faithThe First Reading provides deeper insight into the value of suffering.  The author of the book of Wisdom says “Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself. As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.’” While suffering is difficult and painful, it is not meaningless, it has deep spiritual value.  When we suffer we find that our faith is tested - what is true about our relationship with Christ is refined, and becomes more precious.  What is false is burned away.  In that way suffering purifies us as gold is purified in a crucible.  

Suffering is an invitation into intimacy with ChristAs Christians we hold up Christ crucified as the symbol of God’s love to the world.  When we choose to unite our suffering to Christ’s love we enter into a intimacy with Christ - and we learn how precious his death and resurrection truly is.  

Suffering makes us CompanionsIn the same way, as Christians we can benefit from suffering as a community, because the sadness and grief today is an invitation to enter into suffering together where we can discover a special bond of intimacy and closeness that comes from knowing the truth and reality of our faith.  When we suffer together we become companions on the journey - that is Men and Women who walk with one another, through suffering, by the sharing of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.  

Invitation to become a companion with ChristWhen we come to the Eucharist today I want to invite you to share your suffering with Him, because he knows how to be with those who suffer.  Offer to him your broken hearts, your sad moments, your grief - and let his love transform your tears into precious, fire-tried faith.

How do we judge a life? - by our encounter with GodTo the world suffering is pointless, empty and devoid of meaning.  Listen again to the book of Wisdom.  
“They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction”

How the world may look at Joni - filled with struggleThe world may look at Joni’s life and see a single mom who died of cancer at the age of 54.  Her life can be thought of as having been too short, or too hard, or filled with a lot of pain, struggle and suffering.  

How Christ sees Joni - she embraced the cross.When Christ looks at Joni’s life He sees a faithful daughter whose life was filled with love for Him because she embraced the cross.  She did not allow the wounds she suffered to define who she was rather she let God’s presence in her life define her identity.

Cancer - a Relational LeprosyOne way that Joni embraced the Cross was by being open to new friendships.  About four or five years ago Joni realized that she found that either she was shying away from new friendships or that others - when they discovered that she had cancer would avoid her as if she suffered from some kind of relational leprosy.  From this realization Joni made it a point to be open to new relationships, and so she did not let her cancer dominate her relationships.  She made it a point to define her life by living, and not by dying from cancer.  Her focus was on growing closer to God and sharing her relationship with God with those who were close to her.

What is my life focused on?This witness of Joni’s cause us to ask the question - Am I allowing myself to be defined by the cancers of 

• Am I infected with the cancers of sin, despair or depression?
• Am I focused on myself?
• My work?
• Do I seek pleasure, security or attention? 

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One way to respond to Joni’s death is to take one characteristic that she modeled to you and imitate her by incorporating it into your life.  Here are some of her gifts 

• She had a profound her witness to life,
• her love of music, 
• her love of scripture,
• her openness to relationship, 
• her desire to help those in despair
• or something else.

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Seek what is aboveThe second reading today provides us with a spiritual lens that can help us in our reflections.  St. Paul says“If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.”

Imitate Joni as she imitated Christ
So take that trait of Joni’s and begin to incorporate it into your life.  In this way we make this scripture from St. Paul come alive in two ways.

Be rooted in your BaptismFirst, we begin to live out our baptism more fully - that is what Paul means when he starts “If then you were raised with Christ”  We are choosing to allow our lives to be defined by God and not by the world.  Seek what is above to prepare for our reunion
Second, when we put the Gospel into action by “seeking what is above” we become partners in the building of the Kingdom of God here on earth.  If we can do these two things then the journey will be easier for us because it will help us to remember the closing of the Gospel where Jesus says “You are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.”