Making Friends With The Lord Jesus Fr. Edwin

This is how our lives as Christians is to be described. The Gospel today tells us so much about it. We need to be loyal, hardworking, honest, charitable to those it is difficult to love, be diligent when everybody wants to waste time and so forth. It is much easier to do evil. We only need to succumb to the temptations. It is much simpler to destroy than to build. But there it is! The consequences of destroying in horrible and perhaps very expensive. But to build, this is our task as Christians. Karl Marx said that religion is the opium of the people. His characterization of Christianity is unfair. Someone challenged Marx--to bad Marx was already dead at this point--to live as a good Christian for one day and then he will see that Christianity is no drug of the people to put them to hallucinate or render them intoxicated.

The Gospel for the Sixth Sunday of Easter tells us about Jesus' invitation to remain in His Love by following His Commandments, just as He remains in His Father's Love by following His Commandments. His Father wanted Him to die on the Cross to save mankind from sin and death. The acid test of whether we truly love God whom we don't see--it is so easy to claim we love Him--is by checking on how we love the others. Loving the others is crucial because God loves them too. He died for all of us. How is our struggle to love the others?

The Lord forewarns us of what we will face if we are truly followers of His. Persecutions! If we become worldly, then we would not expect these attacks on religion and on the Catholic Faith. What Our Lord taught us in the Beatitudes, for example, sets us in collision course with the values of worldliness and evil. Hence, our sufferings are compounded together with the given difficulties of ordinary life itself. This sad and frustrating state of affairs here in earth should not discourage us. Our hope is enlivened to look forward to that day when we go to see God face to face, for eternity!

Jesus taught more than in the manner of Moses. He taught with personal authority. He did not cite any other authority to back up his teachings and claims. The other teachers of Israel taught quoting scriptures or venerable rabbis or traditions. But Jesus had an authority totally unheard of in the land. He spoke with personal, first-person singular, authority. He had no need of any backing. On top of that, He spoke with total integrity of life. People could see that He first lived what He taught and only then would He teach the people. He declared He was the Way, the Truth and the Life. There was no need to look for another for the truth or the life. No need to go elsewhere. He was the total package.

Since He is Love, He cannot but love us. We do not need to do anything to deserve His love for us. He simply loves us. We are able to love the others when we have been loved first by God. We love God in return by following His Commandments. His Commandments are a gift to us. This gift is a guide for us to blossom as human beings. When a trainer trains his dog to do certain tricks and the dog does them well, the trainer is happy. Something like that is what happens between God and us. We please Him when we follow His instructions.

The Church presents again for our reading and contemplation the allegory of the vine and the branches. We underscore the statement of Jesus that without Him or without being connected to Him as a branch is to its vine, we can do absolutely nothing. Hence, we should appreciate the importance of maintaining heroically our prayer life, which is the same as maintaining a relationship with Him. This is the universal reply He makes to any of our petitions. He affords us a relationship with Him. This is extraordinary!