6TH SUNDAY HOMILY OF EASTER – YEAR B

6TH SUNDAY HOMILY OF EASTER – YEAR B

HOMILY THEME: LOVE ONE ANOTHER

BY: Bishop Gerald M. Musa

Acts 10:25-26.34-35.44-48; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17.

It is said that love makes the world go round. This is why we love to listen to love stories. We love to talk, sing and write about love. Every day we give and receive love. Life is meaningful only when we can discover and experience authentic, unconditional love from God, and from another person and when we can share that love.

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One of the major obstacles that prevent us from loving other people is prejudice. Prejudice is the act of judging people before we encounter them. When we fall into the trap of prejudice, we judge people (negatively or positively) by the way they appear, by their tribal or racial background, by what others have said or written about them, or we simply judge people at first sight. Our pre-judgment either opens us up to encounter other people or closes our hearts entirely. In other words, prejudice is pre-judgment, which is often misjudgment, having a mindset, narrow-minded, partial, one-sided, biased view about someone or something.

Problems of discrimination, xenophobia, segregation, partiality, nepotism, and stereotypes are all related to prejudice. In prejudice, we make general and sweeping statements about certain persons or groups of people even without encountering them or having seen only one aspect of their lives. Prejudice makes us develop some fixed ideas about groups of people. For example, some women have fixed perceptions about men, just as some men have narrow-minded views about all women. In religious circles, some people would have inflexible labels for all Protestants, fixed ideas about Catholics or unchangeable views about Muslims.

The Apostle Peter had a very serious problem of prejudice against Gentiles. Many Gentiles were neither Jews nor Christians. The Jews considered themselves as a special race, descended from Abraham and chosen by God and they called everyone who was non-Jew a Gentile. The Jews and some early Christians considered Gentiles as uncircumcised people, unbelievers, unconsecrated and rebellious. Therefore, the Gentiles were treated as second-class people, as dogs and as unrighteous people.

After the resurrection of Jesus, Peter and the rest of the early Christians were reluctant to reach out to the Gentiles. Subsequently, there was a debate about whether or not to baptise the Gentiles. God appeared to Peter in a dream and instructed him to go to the house of Cornelius a Gentile and to accept him as a brother and as a fellow human being who is worthy to be loved and respected. Thereafter, Peter experienced a deep conversion from his negative prejudice against the Gentiles and so after his conversion he said: “In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:35). This experience of Peter goes to show that authentic love makes us accept others, even strangers and people who are outside our religious groups, tribes, race, ideology, party. Peter had to confront, jettison and unlearn his prejudices. Soon after, he began to see people as God sees them, and he began to learn to love as God loves and to accept people impartially. He began to understand that the love of God is like rain that does not choose the grass on which it falls.

Scriptures tell us a profound truth about the nature of God and the Evangelist John puts it in a poetic way “God is love and whoever lives in love lives in God and God in him” (1 John 4:16). So, how does God love? A priest of the Order of Mary Immaculate, Fr. Ronald Rolheiser provides some insight into the love of God. He says:
God’s love isn’t a reward for being good, doing our duty, resisting temptation, bearing the heat of the day in fidelity, saying our prayers, remaining pure, or offering worship, good and important though these things are. God loves us because God is love and cannot be discriminating in love.

Consequently, Jesus challenges us to love as God loves us. He says, “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” (John 15:12-13). We cannot really love if we are not connected with God who is the source of love, because he is the river from which love flows. We should remain in him, if our love must be fruitful.

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