May 6, 2018: 6th Sunday B
May 6, 2018: 6th Sunday B
Click to hear Audio Homily
This weekend the children in our parish received their First Eucharist. It was so heartwarming to see the children in their special clothes with their parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. A month ago while I was visiting my parents in Dallas, I looked through an old photo album and came across my First Communion photo. There I was, an eight-year old in South Korea dressed in white with my palms opened to receive Jesus in the Eucharist from a priest. Did I understand the meaning of the Eucharist at that time? Was I prepared to receive Him? Was I filled with gratitude to God for that amazing gift? I don’t know. I had a faint understanding that it was a special moment in my life, and that I would be welcoming Jesus into my heart.
In the Eucharist Jesus gives all of himself to us in an intimate way--his body, soul, and divinity--holding nothing back. Through the season of Lent, we read and reflected on the scriptures about the sacrificial love of Jesus; he gave of himself unto death. His love cost him dearly. When Our Lord said, “This I command you: love one another,” the kind of love Jesus spoke about is a sacrificial love--a love that costs.
Mother Teresa received a letter with a little bit of cash from a little girl in the United States. The girl wrote that as she was preparing for her First Communion, she asked her parents not to spend money on buying her new clothes for the occasion. Instead, she convinced her parents to give her the money so that she could send it to Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Mother Teresa said, “That little one, just seven or eight years old, already in her heart was loving until it hurt.”
The love that Jesus commands us to practice is vastly different than the ‘love’ we hear about in popular songs. In popular culture, the so called ‘love’ is emotional, short-lived, conditional, self-serving, and self-seeking. The kind of love Jesus commands us to practice is self-renouncing love, often requiring patient endurance and hoping against adversity. True love is easier said than done, yet Jesus asks of us nothing less. Sacrificial love doesn’t mean that we overwork and overspend, so that we can accumulate more material possessions and engage in more activities at the expense of neglecting the needs of family members. A far better example is that of a husband whose wife had early onset of Alzheimer’s. Her husband rearranged his schedule to be a more effective caretaker for her. He cooks, cleans, bathes, administers medicines, and makes sure his wife is able to get to and from the bathroom even when her body fails. He cherishes her in sickness, health, disappointment, and frailty.
To live as Jesus lives and love as Jesus loves means making sacrifices. We have to turn away from our selfish tendencies to be absorbed in our plans and desires in order to follow Our Lord’s. The evil one tries to convince us that it’s pointless to love when people are unreasonable, illogical, self-centered, dishonest, and ungrateful. When we are tempted in this way, we need to look back on the way Jesus loved us--enduring betrayal, false accusations, torture, ridicule, physical pain, and finally death. As disciples of Jesus, we must be willing to love even when suffering is involved. We have received so much from Jesus, even when we did not deserve it. How can we, then, keep this love just to ourselves?
Eucharist means thanksgiving. We can never thank the Lord enough for the gift he has given us with the Eucharist. Let us live the gift we have received by nourishing others through our lives. Even when we encounter difficult people, we are not to give up on them, ignore them or write them off. By loving them we are obeying what Jesus commanded us, “Love one another as I love you.”
This weekend the children in our parish received their First Eucharist. It was so heartwarming to see the children in their special clothes with their parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. A month ago while I was visiting my parents in Dallas, I looked through an old photo album and came across my First Communion photo. There I was, an eight-year old in South Korea dressed in white with my palms opened to receive Jesus in the Eucharist from a priest. Did I understand the meaning of the Eucharist at that time? Was I prepared to receive Him? Was I filled with gratitude to God for that amazing gift? I don’t know. I had a faint understanding that it was a special moment in my life, and that I would be welcoming Jesus into my heart.
In the Eucharist Jesus gives all of himself to us in an intimate way--his body, soul, and divinity--holding nothing back. Through the season of Lent, we read and reflected on the scriptures about the sacrificial love of Jesus; he gave of himself unto death. His love cost him dearly. When Our Lord said, “This I command you: love one another,” the kind of love Jesus spoke about is a sacrificial love--a love that costs.
The love that Jesus commands us to practice is vastly different than the ‘love’ we hear about in popular songs. In popular culture, the so called ‘love’ is emotional, short-lived, conditional, self-serving, and self-seeking. The kind of love Jesus commands us to practice is self-renouncing love, often requiring patient endurance and hoping against adversity. True love is easier said than done, yet Jesus asks of us nothing less. Sacrificial love doesn’t mean that we overwork and overspend, so that we can accumulate more material possessions and engage in more activities at the expense of neglecting the needs of family members. A far better example is that of a husband whose wife had early onset of Alzheimer’s. Her husband rearranged his schedule to be a more effective caretaker for her. He cooks, cleans, bathes, administers medicines, and makes sure his wife is able to get to and from the bathroom even when her body fails. He cherishes her in sickness, health, disappointment, and frailty.
Eucharist means thanksgiving. We can never thank the Lord enough for the gift he has given us with the Eucharist. Let us live the gift we have received by nourishing others through our lives. Even when we encounter difficult people, we are not to give up on them, ignore them or write them off. By loving them we are obeying what Jesus commanded us, “Love one another as I love you.”
