STAY! REMAIN! IN PLACE! IN GOD!
6th Sunday of Easter (B)
13 May 2012
Someone has written years ago that love is primarily shown
in presence, not presents. In our culture nowadays, which encourages labor
migration, unable as the country is, to give employment to hordes of college
graduates, love is done and executed long-distance. More than a decade ago,
long distance telephone was the favorite means and method to convey love. In
our times, it is “Facetime,” or, more probably “Skype” for a good number of our
countrymen.
Many of us cannot afford to stay home and be jobless. Many
of us who prefer to, do claim to stay put, and reap all the benefits of being
present to one’s family and loved ones, but unless he or she was born with a
silver spoon in the mouth, staying home and staying put does not necessarily
put food on the table.
I speak of presence today, for that is what the Lord
emphasizes in today’s gospel passage from John the Evangelist. He talks of
love, of course, and that is something that seems so obvious from the English
version of Scripture. But what is not so obvious is the deeper underlying
meaning behind the word used to convey what, unfortunately, can only be
translated into English in one word – love, for agape, not love, to stand for eros and philia, which are two other words in Greek for the same English
“love.”
So what difference do they make?
To answer this, we need to go right back to the readings …
to Scripture.
In the first reading, we hear of the pagan Cornelius
submitting himself and his entire household to Baptism. God’s love, we are told
indirectly, has no bounds. Let us face it … human love, that both eros and
philia are, has its boundaries. It has its limits, beyond which it cannot go.
As they say, “out of sight; out of mind.” When we love long-distance, sooner or
later, we will lose touch. Sooner than we imagine, we lose warmth. No amount of
daily Skype conversations can make up for one’s absence. As a counselor, I have
heard so many stories of love lost, love grown cold, love crossed and
forgotten, for one simple reason … people are absent to each other! Just as
recently as three years ago, one of the parish volunteer drivers, a young man
with a young wife and toddler kid, who went to Saudi Arabia, found someone else
in less than a year. Love grew indifferent on account of distance.
Twenty years ago, I had a counselee seminarian, who, every
time he talked about his mother, would burst out in tears, for she had been
absent from his life ever since he was an elementary kid. Though she tried to
make up for it, as invariably, all OFWs tried to do, by giving presents in
exchange of presence, the same gnawing gap, and emotional vacuum, remained!
But again, in the first reading, God Himself broke through
boundaries. He loved the pagan enough, as He loved everyone enough, to break
through the human boundaries, and call Cornelius to conversion and new life.
Peter puts it nicely: “God shows no partiality … whoever fears him and acts
uprightly is acceptable to him.”
The human love called “eros,” we all know all too well, has
got bounds. Our love is bound by beauty in mould and physical youthfulness.
When youth and beauty are gone, then both eros and philia can disappear with
the passing of time. Philial love can wane, as time moves on. Even brothers and
sisters who used to be so close to one another can get estranged in adulthood,
when sibling bonds grow cold, and when each one has taken each their own
separate paths. Almost to the day, we hear of sad and sob stories of actresses
who used to share the limelight as showbiz celebrities, but who at some point
become bitter enemies.
But what does the second reading tell us? More on this,
assuredly, but love of the divine kind not of the human kind. John exhorts his
readers: “Beloved, let us love one another” … but he takes pains to show us
what sort of love that is, and for what reason … “for love is of God.”
If this is the love that is of God, then it penetrates
through walls and boundaries. It sees no barriers, nor deterrents. It suffers
no breaks and bolts to bar its being shared around to all!
I need to hear this good news for myself, too. We all need
to be reminded of this in our times. Repeatedly. Assuredly. Definitely. No ifs
and buts, here allowed! God Himself says so … “In this is love: not that we
have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our
sins.”
Human and frail as I am, I need this reminder. I need this
good news. At a time when I feel so unappreciated and unloved by the very
people I worked for over the last three years, only to be accused of things
that never even crossed my mind, I need this piece of good news. I need to be
reconnected. I need to be put back on the groove of God’s boundless love, no
matter what; come what may; happen what might!
And what is this love all about for a clincher?
I would like you all to notice the words Christ uses …
Remain in my love! In the original Greek, the word has more to do with stay …
“Stay in place.” Stay in the right place. Put your heart in the right place!
When one’s heart is in place, in the right place, then neither time nor
distance, nor material things, is the primary consideration. All we need is
presence. All we need to do is remain. All we are asked to do is stay.
And I’ve got one more piece of good news for you … no, not
mine really, but still His! Guess what brought us here? Guess what led us close
to the bosom of God? Not us, not them, not anyone who can give us money and
presents, and offer us dowries and dreams of a lifetime, enough to make us
filled, though not necessarily fulfilled!
And it is simply this … Let us hear it straight from the
Lord: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go
and bear fruit that will remain.”
Remain in Him. Stay. Stay in place, and put your right where
it belongs – in God’s bosom!
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