Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter

We are here to worship today because we love Jesus Christ and want to follow Him more closely.

We are all convinced, some more and some less, that true joy (the "complete joy" that Jesus speaks about in today's Gospel), the joy that our hearts long for, cannot be found apart from our friendship with Jesus Christ.

Some of us love Christ with a mature, deep, passionate love. Some of us love Him sincerely but still resist His will in some areas. We still have terrible habits of self-indulgence, for example, or we don't trust Him enough to accept Church teaching or to do what, in our conscience, we know He is asking us to do.

In either case, whether our love is mature or we are still on the way to maturity, there is one danger we all have to watch out for: thinking we can do it on our own.

We live in a global culture based on individualism and self-sufficiency; we measure success by achieving more than our neighbors.

And so, when it comes to loving God, which, again, is the only source of true, deep, lasting joy, we tend to think we can do it all by ourselves. We believe that the proper technique and effort will propel us into holiness.

But that is not the case.

The fuel for our Christian life doesn't come from ourselves but from God. We can only love God as He should be loved if we first experience His love for us. This is what St. John means in today's Second Reading when he says, "In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as expiation for our sins."

We eventually get stuck and frustrated when we try to live our Christian lives in our own power without depending on God's grace. We either stop growing in virtue or cannot overcome some sinful habit.

Imagine a tree with only roots and a trunk but no branches or leaves. It wouldn't last very long. It would absorb moisture and nutrients from the soil. But without leaves that spread out and catch the rays of sunlight, it would receive no energy to turn that moisture and those nutrients into growth and fruitfulness.

Christ, the Son of God, and the revelation of His love for each of us is the sunlight that gives life and energy to our spiritual efforts. Only by discovering His love and letting it shine in our hearts will we, in turn, overcome our natural selfishness and learn to love others as He has loved us.