The Catechism compares our encounter with Christ to that of the woman who met him at the well, whom Christ asked for a drink. (Woman at the Well by Carl Heinrich Bloch, Wikimedia Commons)
Sixth
Sunday of Easter, Year B
First
Reading: Acts
10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48
Second
Reading: 1 Jn
4:7-10
Gospel
Reading: Jn
15:9-17
God created us and holds us in existence through love, as we hear in this Sunday’s readings. We cannot live in conformity with the truth about human beings unless we freely acknowledge this love.
God created humans for himself, so he never ceases to draw us to him. In fact, he has written the desire for him in our hearts, as history confirms. Humans have always sought God, in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, etc. We can forget, overlook, or even reject him, but religious belief and behaviour are so universal that humans can be called religious beings, says the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
In his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, St. John Paul II said “the fulfillment” of this yearning, which is “present in all the religions of mankind,” is Jesus Christ, God-made-Man. Now, he says, “religion is no longer a blind search for God,” but a response to a God “who reveals himself.”
The Catechism compares our encounter with Christ to that of the woman who met him at the well, whom Christ asked for a drink. “It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink,” it says. “Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us.”
In prayer, it says, we raise our minds and hearts to God. However, “whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.”
“In this is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us,” St. John says in the Second Reading. “You did not choose me, but I chose you,” Christ tells his apostles in the Gospel Reading.
We have heard “God loves you” so often that we can forget how amazing it is. God, the uncreated creator of the universe, loves us. He wants us; he thirsts for us; he is on fire with love for us; not because we are worth loving, but because he himself is love.
Even when we disobeyed him and lost his friendship, he did not abandon us to the power of death, but “sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins,” St. John says.
“God’s passionate love for his people” is so great “that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice,” said Pope Benedict XVI. “So great is God’s love for man that by becoming Man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice and love.”
Finally, St. Paul says, God “sent forth into our hearts the Spirit of his Son, which cries out ‘Abba!’ (‘Father’),” thus confirming that we are no longer just God’s artifacts, things he has made, but his beloved sons and daughters.
This is what happened in this Sunday’s First Reading. “The Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word,” and the Jewish Christians heard even the Gentiles “extolling God.”
On our own, we do not know how to praise God, but his Spirit “helps us in our weakness,” St. Paul says. When we pray, God hears his Spirit, and “he who searches hearts knows what the Spirit means,” for the Spirit intercedes for us according to God’s will.
It seems there is nothing that is not God’s work. Christ left us an example, St. Peter said; now all we have to do is “follow in his footsteps.” He does whatever is necessary for our salvation; our part is to let him do it, freely, consciously, and lovingly.
However, it is only when, like Mary, we recognize our lowliness that God can do great things for us. Only in our weakness is his power able to act, for he will not override our free will.
This Sunday, let us “sing a new song to the Lord,” for “he has shown his justice to the nations”: even to the Gentiles, the non-Jews.