04 May 2024 – 6th Sunday of Easter (Year B) (Sunset Mass)

by Fr Fabian Dicom

I hope you have all noticed the banners and buntings that now graze our parish grounds. It is too big not to miss. Right? Bearing the words ‘In God all are One.‘

Now these banners are inspired by Genesis 1:27 where we learn that God created man and woman in His image. This marks the beginning of our preparation for the Feast of Pentecost which is also our parish feast.

Now ‘In God, all are One‘ is not just a slogan. It is our theme, our ideal, our goal. It emerged as a response to the longing or the cry of our parish community for greater inclusivity, care and unity. From last year until now, we have yearned to embody these virtues more fully. And now we are making focused effort to realise this vision.

Today, we officially launch, if I want to call it ‘In God, all are One‘ campaign. And this will be our focus for the upcoming feast of our parish and beyond, until the end of the liturgical year in November. So I urge each one of us to pray and to work towards making this a reality.

Now it is wonderful that the First Reading of this evening from the Acts of the Apostles fittingly introduces our journey, our campaign. In the Reading, we witness a profound moment in the early Christian communities’ understanding of God’s acceptance of all people. Peter, one of the Apostles, visits the household of Cornelius, a Roman centurion who was a devout and God-fearing Gentile.

Now Peter realising that God shows no partiality whatsoever declares that God accepts people from every nation who fear Him and do what is right. Now as Peter speaks, the Holy Spirit falls upon Cornelius and his household, demonstrating that God is indeed accepting Gentiles into the faith, demonstrating that everyone is welcome. This moment marks a pivotal turning point in the early Christian community, emphasising that the message of Jesus is for everyone, regardless of ethnicity or background.

My dear friends, let us take inspiration from this passage as we embark on our campaign to become more inclusive, to become more caring and a united parish.

And Jesus in the Gospel tells us how. The Commandments of Jesus may be reduced to one, the Commandment of love. Also familiar to all of us. Love is the sap of the vine. We had the vine and the branches last week. Love is the sap of the vine, the bond of existence within the unity of Father, Son and all of us.

Jesus had until now granted to His disciples, to His own, obvious marks of affection, from the time He chose them, He cared for them, He loved them. But now He goes on to say: This is my Commandment, love one another as I have loved you. And He goes to say this: A man can have no greater love than to lay down his live for his friends.

You are my friends. You are my friends.

And remember the context when He says this to the disciples, that this is after the Last Supper but before His crucifixion, before His death. Love and only love and only, only love. And this is what we call Agape. You have heard this word many times. This is the tot in Greek there are different levels of love. In English, everything is love. But here it encompasses everything. Total, unconditional, inclusive love. And I am sure we know what this is.

I believe that if some time, if not more than some time, we have experienced that in our lives. But how exactly? How exactly is this going to happen with the disciples? How is it going to happen with us and Jesus?

We have a hint in the Gospel – through friendship. You are my friends. I call you friends because I made known to you everything I have learned from my Father and I will lay down my life for you. I will lay down my life for you. Now did they grasp what He was saying to them? I wonder.

And what about us?
I want to know what proof there is that Jesus is my friend. I am so lonely, I am struggling, I am sick, I feel so unworthy, I am sinful.

But now Jesus, even if they did not get it completely, now He is going to give them the supreme evidence of His love. Voluntary death. A life freely laid down will be the characteristic proof of this love, this Agape. A force, I would even say, which moves one to sacrifice one’s self for others. The statement that the greatest love is that which entails the supreme sacrifice is not however a definition of love.

Jesus means that this sacrifice is the most expressive mark of love.

So the sense is nobody can give a more convincing proof of love than one who offers one’s life for those who one loves. And when Jesus adds ‘You are my friends,’, in effect He’s telling them nobody has a greater love than that which I have for you. And this evening, He is telling us the same thing. And we reciprocate by embracing and nourishing that friendship. And how do we do that?

The first words of the Gospel: Remain in Him. Remain in Jesus. But remaining in Him must be expressed in the way we live. In the way we live.

He goes on to say: You did not choose me. I chose you. I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last. And therefore, we too are commissioned to do that. And yet we ask this question:
Can I really love that way? Can I just go out and do such things?

And I want to turn to the Second Reading that confirms that we can love. Rather our nature, our very nature is to love.

Now Saint Paul in Romans 5:5 teaches that this kind of love, Agape, is poured into the hearts of Christians.

John, in his letter in the Gospel, emphasises that love is intimately tied to the believers’ spiritual rebirth.

Allow me to explain. It is the seal or the hallmark of divine sonship or daughtership. Everyone who loves is born of God. And that is what we hear. So loving is an expression of being born of God. I repeat: Loving is an expression of being born of God. A profound reality.

So when God creates us, He shares His nature and life with us. We share with that divine nature. And since one born of God and one who loves God are equal designations of a Christian, we must take it that the one born of God has received a capacity, an ability of loving, a power of loving, inherent in the divine nature in which one participates. Basically all of us, because we are born of God, created by Him, created in the image and likeness of God, we have the capacity to love. Or rather we cannot but love.

This love is the basis of brotherly, sisterly, fraternal love which springs from the new nature in believers. So Agape, this ultimate, ultimate love is the fruit of the divine seed received at baptism. So Christians must love because they have been born of God and because now love emanates from God indeed and God is love.

You are not confused, are you? No. Okay.

I think we cannot get tired of listening to how much God loves us. But we need to get used to the fact that we can love. Our very nature is to love. We need to believe that. We cannot but love.

So that love which is innate in each of us must lead us to befriend each other in this parish and beyond, without any prejudice, without any discrimination. To love and to befriend in the way of Jesus. And this friendship entails laying down our lives for each other.

And if we contextualise it today and connect it to our journey ahead, ‘In God, all are One‘, what does it mean?

It simply means putting others first by our actions.

We give which include our time, our talents, our resources but we must give because our very nature is to love.

And when we do so, we are showing that we are putting others ahead of our reputation, of our comfort, of our self, that we are compassionate, that we love, that every single person around us is important. Around here and beyond.

And this is a sure way that we will become inclusive, we will be caring and we will be united.

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