Seventh Sunday Easter

Seventh Sunday of Easter 2007 5:30 PM In her book, Chasing Grace, psychologist Martha Manning recalls experiencing God’s grace in a very unexpected place: Doctor Manning was felled by a bad case of the flu. She was feeling miser-able. Her friend, a physician at the teaching hospital where she worked, urged her to come in for treatment. So Doctor Manning bundled herself up and came in. But in her sweat clothes and heavy coat, with no makeup and a face puffed up by sniffling, chills and teary eyes, no one at the hospital recognized her - and, to make matters worse, she forgot her purse, so she had no credentials to identify herself with. Upon entering the outpatient clinic, she asked for her doctor friend. Unable to present any identification to the nurse she was gruffly ordered to sit down and wait her turn like everyone else. The crowded waiting room was thick with body odor, booze and antiseptic. It was hard to find an empty place to sit, since many of the people appeared to have brought along all their earthly possessions. No one made a move to clear a space for Martha - until an elderly man cleared the seat next to him, placing his plastic bags on the floor by his feet. ‘Miss, c’mon over here.” His toothless smile was the greatest act of kindness she had seen all day. ‘You’re not from here.’ he said knowingly. ‘What’s aihn’ you?’ He felt Martha’s forehead and winced. ‘Child, you’re burning up. And that cough is mean. Don’t worry, they’ll fix you up, give you shots and those big pills, and you’ll be fine.’ Martha was so grateful for such unexpected kindness, she started to cry. The old man took his ratty old blanket and placed it between Martha’s head and the wall for her to use as a pillow. ‘Just try to sleep. It makes the time move much faster.” Some time later, Doctor Manning’s friend found her in the waiting room. The nurse apologized profusely for not recognizing her. ‘If only we had known who you were.’ But as Doctor Manning writes: ‘I was sick and groggy. Limp and weak. I didn’t know the day or the time... The people in charge didn’t know who I was. But the man sitting next to me knew. The only credentials he needed was that I was sick and lost and scared. Nothing else mattered. CONNECTION: In his ‘high priestly prayer,’ which you have just heard proclaimed, Jesus pleads with his Father that the same love that binds him to his Father will bind us to one another. Jesus prays that our love for each other will be like his love for us: total, selfless, unconditional and unlimited love. It is the kind of love that transcends credentials and labels like the ones Dr. Manning could not present. It’s a love that realizes that true joy can be experienced only in acts of kindness and compassion such as the elderly man showed to Dr. Manning. It is a love as real to us as the sun and rain which nourish our earth. We know especially from the wedding ceremony that true love unites. But we know from this story that it doesn’t always have to be romantic love that floats in the rarefied atmosphere of lavish or giddy enthusiasm. Here were two strangers sitting together but relish the love that bound them together. The elderly man’s love as concern and Dr. Manning’s love as gratitude. Through your love for others you can begin to build a worldwide community by getting deeply involved with the stranger next to you as did the elderly man with Dr. Manning. Before you can love others you must believe – really believe – that God loves you. Sometimes you may say God loves you but your actions betray the conviction of your words. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said in one of his talks, God loves you despite your unworthiness. It is his love that will make you better, not your betterment which makes God love you. n other words, God’s love is a free gift. And so should your love be a gift freely given, not measuring like a surveyor to see how much love you can accumulate like property. rue love is a gift not an obsession. Love is like a butterfly; it’s most beautiful when it’s set free. True love unites but it doesn’t bind like shackles You love someone – and this is especially true of husbands and wives – when you recognize that love is not rooted in the flimsy ecstasy of starry-eyed feelings. All sails and no anchor. Rather you love someone when you want the very best for that person and want it with all your heart, all the time, with all your energy. This means that to love someone as Jesus loves you, you must work – and work with spendthrift energy – for example, at helping the other person overcome a sense of self-inflicted worthlessness so that that person can enter into an exciting, rejuvenating sense of self-worth and self-acceptance. There is another aspect of love that I want to emphasize. Kathleen Norris in her book, The Cloister Walk, says, We should have a focused love so we can grow into the kind of openness that we need if we are going to see and hear each other in a world polarized by our differences. In other words, you need to love one another because of your differences not in spite of them. When you think about it, in genuine loving relationships, the beauty of your communication is the shared celebration of your differences. It is precisely your differences that first attracted you to each other. It is precisely your differences that motivate you to want the very best for each other. It is precisely your differences that make you unique and precious in the eyes of the God whose love makes you better. HUMOR E mail from a young man to his girlfriend: “Darling, I love you and I think you’re wonderful. In order to be with you I would suffer the greatest difficulties and would face the greatest dangers that anyone can imagine. In fact, to spend only one minute with you, I would climb the highest mountain in the world. I would swim across the widest river. I would enter the deepest forest and with my bare hands fight against the fiercest animals.” Love Stanley P.S.: I’ll be over to see you Wednesday night if it doesn’t rain.” THOUGHT Learn to cherish the sacrifices of love.