Homily for May 6, 2018 - Easter 6

Homily for Easter 6

May 6, 2018

Joy is Loving Rightly

            Look around you. Not actually; I mean metaphorically – think of the people you work with, go to school with, who play on your kids’ sports teams and shop next to you in the grocery store. Do they look joyful? Now, look in the metaphorical mirror – do YOU look joyful? With all of the pleasures, conveniences, and entertainments of the modern world, why are so few people joyful?

            We all want to be joyful – and Our Lord tells us in the Gospel, “I have told you these things so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.” He comes to fill us with joy. Then what is joy, and how do we dwell in it?

            First of all, joy is different from pleasure and happiness. Pleasure and happiness is temporary, joy is eternal. Jesus connects joy to love - to have true joy, we must love rightly. That means we love the right things, and we love them in the right way.

            And here’s where we often make the mistake. We love things that are finite, temporary, and expect them to give us eternal joy. I call this the Christmas Afternoon Syndrome. We’ve all had the experience of being a young kid on Christmas…we have waited, anticipated, anxiously looked forward to this one morning for the entire past month. When we were kids, it seemed like all of our preparations, energies, and thoughts for the entire month of December focused around that one day when we would get tons of gifts. We can’t sleep on Christmas Eve, because we are literally trembling with excitement about Christmas morning. Then it finally comes! We tear open our gifts, delighting in everything that we’ve been given.

            And then Christmas afternoon comes. We’ve seen our toys, we’ve tried on the clothes, we sit amidst the wrapping paper on the floor and think, “Wow. That was fun, but…what next?” I always found it to be such a let-down. Don’t get me wrong, I always had wonderful gifts from a very loving family, but I really thought these gifts would make me deeply happy and satisfied. And now that the gifts are opened and there’s no anticipation anymore, I was left feeling rather empty.

            We do the same thing as adults! We get a burst of joy and happiness from a new car. New Car Smell, shiny and clean, a pleasure to drive. But the first time we spill that Venti Mocha Latte on the front seat, or have a flat tire, or get in a fender-bender, we find ourselves more frustrated than happy at this thing we thought would deeply satisfy us!

            So to find joy that lasts, we must love the things that last. The only thing that will pass with us from this life into eternity is our relationship with the Lord, and our love of others. Jesus Himself says as much – He speaks of joy that comes when we “remain in the Father’s love”. So, we must love the right things.

            But we must also love them in the right way. Jesus ties love to both sacrifice and obedience. This kind of joy-producing love is not a mere feeling. If love is only a feeling and does not involve sacrifice and obedience, then it’s not love at all but mere sentimentality – which can never satisfy us.

            So let’s look at these aspects. We must love sacrificially – Jesus says He gives us a New Commandment, to love one another as He has loved us. But why is this commandment new? After all, it says in the Old Testament, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But Jesus ups the ante – we shouldn’t just love others as we love ourselves, we should love others as Jesus loves us – which is totally, self-sacrificially. Jesus challenges us to love others more than ourselves through concrete acts of self-sacrificing love.

            I think, for example, of the life of St. Gianna Molla. Gianna was an Italian doctor in the 1950s and ‘60s – a lively, vivacious woman, married with three children. A fourth child was on the way, but she was tragically diagnosed with cancer at the same time. Her doctors told her to abort the child so she could go through chemotherapy and remove the tumor. As a doctor herself, Gianna knew the risks, but she said, “No, I will keep my child no matter what.” She continued to grow sicker from the cancer as her child grew within her, and as soon as the baby was born, she was rushed into surgery, but it was too late. Seven days later, Gianna Molla died, having given up her life to save the life of her unborn child. Everyone around her remarked, as she was dying, about her sublime joy that absolutely radiated from her eyes. Interestingly, her daughter, for whom she sacrificed her life, was present in Rome when Pope John Paul II canonized St. Gianna Molla. For those with a worldly mindset, this sacrifice would be unthinkable; but for those united to Christ, this sacrifice brings true joy, because it makes authentic human love become incarnate.

            Finally, and perhaps paradoxically, loving God rightly is related to obedience. Jesus says, “If you love Me, keep my commandments.” We can see this even on a human level – if a child loves their parents, they will obey their rules. If we love God, that love looks concrete in obedience to His commands. But we tend to fudge it, don’t we? We think, “I’m pretty good. I keep most of the commandments.” Look, we are all sinners, and God’s love never fails even if we sin. But we must always set our eyes and our hearts on that perfect obedience that shows our perfect love for God.

Let me be honest – one of the ways in which many modern men and women can easily obey the Lord out of love is by attending Mass every single Sunday. Some people have it in their mind that, “Oh, as long as I get to Mass when I can, when it’s convenient, then I really do love God.” My friends, this is false. Not only is it a mortal sin to miss Mass intentionally, it’s also a sign that we love something else other than God – our dance classes, our vacations, our job. Love demands sacrifice and obedience. We obey His command to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation (including this Thursday, the Ascension!), not out of a servile fear, but out of an obedient love. He is God; we are not.

My friends, all of this is directed to joy. We have everlasting joy when we love everlasting things – the love of God and the love of others. We must then love them in the right way – through sacrifice and obedience. It sounds like a paradox the world cannot understand – we find joy through sacrifice? Joy through obedience? Yes, because the One we are sacrificing for, the One we are obeying, is also the Source of all joy.