HOMILY OF 5TH THURSDAY OF EASTER YEAR B
HOMILY THEME: OUR HOME IN CHRIST
BY: Fr. Karabari Paul
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.”
In the Gospel of today (John 15:9-11), Jesus invites us to abide in His love. To abide in His love simply means to dwell in Him. Jesus as God is love, and this love is unmistakably linked to the Father’s love. Here, Jesus is offering more than a temporary shelter. Jesus is offering us a place where we are at peace, secured, and nurtured; a place where we can put down our worries, weariness, and frustrations, and simply bask in God’s presence. David said, ‘My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God’ (Psalm 84:2).
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The life, the love of Jesus is all encompassing, and therefore, all forgiving, there is space enough to falter and not be cast out. And that is space that we can offer to one another. In order to make ourselves home with Jesus, we will be making room, making space, making home for others as well. This is the kind of life that eternity requires.
The good news is that Jesus desires to be our dwelling place. Remarkably, He doesn’t say, ‘abide in my sorrow’ but love. Sometimes, we treat Him more like an emergency shelter that is only used in times of trouble, but what we really need to do is make Him our permanent dwelling place. So how can we do that? The first thing we need to do is commit to spending time with Him each day. This may not come naturally to us at first, so it will take a conscious decision and effort on our part. But as we get to know Him better and our relationship with Him grows, those moments when it’s just us and God will become very precious and our desire to be with Him will get stronger. We also need to embrace daily His Sacraments and Words and allow those to influence and guide us. As we learn to trust what He says, we will seek His opinion more and more, and discover that He is our place of peace, safety and rest.
The fullness of Jesus’ love is more than a temporary offer of hospitality. It is nothing less than unconditional invitation into the divine life of the Trinity. His arms stretched out on the wood of the cross are wide enough to embrace absolutely all of who we are especially all the faults and foibles that we might prefer to keep private.
As we persist in His word, His Sacraments, and His love for one another, there may be times as we make our home in Christ that His Word seems confusing or vexing, time when the sacraments seem far off or offer little consolation, and times when loving one another feels impossible. But Christ’s love is big enough to contain it all and so we can always return and rest and make our home in Jesus. GOD IS STILL ON THE THRONE. May God bless you and your household always through Christ Our Lord Amen.
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