“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
There is a great musical called “Love”
in which Andrew Lloyd Webber sang a beautiful song
called “Love Changes Everything.”
I want to read a few of the lyrics as they are just beautiful:
Love changes everything;
hands and faces;
earth and sky.
How you live
and how you die.
Love changes everything.
Love can make a summer fly
or a night seem like a lifetime.
Love changes everything.
Now I tremble at your name.
Nothing in the world will
Ever be the same.
Love changes everything…
This beautiful song goes on to say
how when we love or are loved,
everything in the world just changes.
Nothing is ever the same;
and that we are completely different;
we are transformed by that love.
And it is true.
For those of you who are married,
think of when you first fell in love with your spouse;
everything turned upside down.
You loved your spouse and wisdom went out the window.
You did whatever he or she wanted.
There is something beautiful about that love.
It doesn’t make sense.
But in so many other ways, it makes complete sense.
It is actually what makes the most sense.
It is called LOVE!
That type of love is really transforming
because when we feel loved like that
or feel in love like that with somebody else,
we will do anything and everything for them.
It is not just between spouses or lovers per se.
It is also between mother and son, mother and daughter;
father and son, father and daughter.
And in relationships with friends.
Love makes our life special.
It may be all the more so when we do not have it
or when we lose the love;
maybe through death or through distance
but the love really never dies.
You see that love, even though they leave us,
it never, ever dies.
On this Mother’s Day, I want to reflect a moment on my mother’s love.
I always intellectually knew my mother loved me;
we figure it out; she gave birth to me;
she did all this stuff; yeah, yeah, she loved me.
It was up here, up in the head
and it only kind of settled down into my heart
when I realized that I loved her in return.
It took a while for me.
I am sure it happened earlier for you
but I really didn’t realize it till somewhere in my teens or 20’s;
embarrassing to admit.
I remember the day she asked me to go somewhere.
It was a big trip.
It wasn’t in the least bit convenient.
I didn’t want to go.
I looked at her with that funny eye
and she really wanted to go and I was like,
“Really? Like it’s a long drive.”
And she goes, “Yeah. I know. I really want to go.”
And I remember thinking, “Okay. Let’s do it.”
The logic was that
while it wasn’t convenient for me,
I realized that my mother loved me and she really want to go
and so I wanted it for her because she wanted it!
I realized, oh, that must be love.
You know, it kind of dawned on me.
Oh, I’m actually doing something I don’t want to do
for the sake of another.
It dawned on me, oh, that’s love.
She’s been doing that all these years.
This is my first time. Wow!
It sort of dawned on me, right?
But that is what mothers do.
They’ve been doing it for years.
And fathers as well.
But it is when we realize it
and we give over our will to their need, or their desire, or their will
then we have made the final connection.
That is the love that changes us.
You see, that’s the love that will enable us to do
whatever needs to be done for the sake of the other.
That is real love.
It may be romantic love, but it is real love.
That is that type of love
that Jesus is trying to talk about to his disciples.
Remember, this is the Last Supper Discourse.
This is where he knows he is going on to his death;
and he is giving them all the wisdom that he can possibly give.
They are getting some of it and not getting a lot of it.
The import is that he is going to die.
And he is saying, “My love will remain.”
And my love will remain in you
and that if you participate in that love
then you also will also be in that circle of love
between the Father and the Son.
What we call the Trinity, the love flowing between them.
When we follow God like that
then we are loving God in return.
Intellectually we all do the same thing I did with my Mum.
We intellectually understand God loves us.
“Yeah. Yeah. God loves us.”
But it doesn’t really change us.
We do not really internalize what that means.
It’s a head thing.
It stays up here in our heads.
And the only time we realize it is
when we start to do what God wants for his sake;
that he wants something that is good for us
but we do it because God wants it.
That is obeying the Lord and it doesn’t feel like a burden. Why?
Because we are doing it out of love.
It doesn’t feel like a burden.
When you love somebody and
you do something extraordinary.
People say “You did what? Wow!”
And you respond, “Yeah. Of course, I did.
I love her. I love him.
That is the way it is.”
Let me give you another example:
When I was thinking about the priesthood,
I didn’t want to be a priest. I really didn’t.
I wanted to be lots of other things but not a priest.
And when I would pray about it.
I would realize that God wanted that for me.
It was God’s desire.
And the only way I was able to crack the code
was when I realized I am doing this because God wants it.
And then I realized it was the right thing for me.
But that is how I eventually unlocked the code;
it happened when I realized that I am doing this for God not for me
because I did not want to do it.
And I learned to love it
because God had wanted it for me.
It is that same sense of what God wants us to do.
It doesn’t feel like a burden when you are doing something out of love.
It is a joy.
You love your spouse.
You love your child.
It is not a burden to love them.
It is what you do.
And that is what God is asking of us,
to love like that,
to love for the sake of the other
but not just fathers and mothers to their children
or children to their parents.
But to go much deeper;
to go beyond that into others in our life;
others who do not have somebody who has loved them;
others who do not feel that love.
We are called to bring that love alive;
to put love where there is no love.
That is what the second reading is all about in Peter’s letter.
The joy comes from loving.
Peter is talking to this community
who is really being ridiculed for being Christians;
it makes no sense to outsiders!
These new Christians are so joyful and they are hopeful. Why?
Because they love one another.
And because they love one another,
they are joyful and everyone else around them
just cannot figure that out.
That just is crazy.
Because anyone on the outside looking at two people
who love each other thinks that it is crazy; it looks crazy.
Why would you do that for each other?
We are called to that for one another.
One of my favorite saints is St. John of the Cross.
And he has this beautiful line that I like to quote often:
“Where you do not find love, put love.
And you will draw out love.”
In other words, in our world today,
the world needs witnesses to love.
And if we, who come to Church and claim to follow Christ
and pointing the way to God who is the God of love,
are not loving then who will?
We are the ones who are called to love.
To love one another, yes by all means.
Especially today, love your mothers but beyond that,
we are called to love those who have no one to love;
to witness to the God of love.
It will look crazy on the outside
but that is what we are called to do.
“Where we do not find love,
put love and you will draw out love.”
