Deacon Cornell’s Homily

 I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.

When I was much younger I used to hear that commandment as this lovely generic platitude. Love everyone else the way Jesus loves me.  But at some point I started to focus on the part that says, "As I have loved you".  How does Jesus love us?? (Pointing up at the crucifix) He loves us to death! Suddenly that new commandment is a very radical, a very challenging commandment: we are to love one another, even if it requires our death.   Today's  readings are perfect to help us to reflect on, and understand  how what we do every week when we celebrate Eucharist is connected to this new commandment. Because we come here to rededicate ourselves, and to prepare ourselves more fully, to love one another as Jesus loves us: to death. 

Just what is that we are doing each week as we celebrate the sacrament of  Eucharist? Let's take a moment and think about that. (Don't worry I am not going to ask anyone to tell what they thought!)

There are probably as many answers to that question as there are people here. Some, especially those from my generation,  might say we are fulfilling our Sunday Mass obligation. Others that we come to give thanks for all that God has blessed us with, while others come to petition God for what seems to be missing from their lives. Some of us come because we are dragged here, either figuratively or literally.

What does the Church think about what we are doing? Let's see what our readings say about that.

Our second reading is from the Book of Revelation. While many people read this book's apocalyptic style as predicting events that will happen at the end of time, there others who see them as a description either of events that were happening in the first century or events that are unfolding even now, since we are still in these last days ever since Jesus ascended into heaven. The passage we heard today proclaims that God's dwelling is with the human race. And this is accomplished, not by God snatching up humanity from here to be with God somewhere else. John sees this new mode of living as God coming down from heaven to dwell here. It is here, on earth, that God dwells with us and wipes away our tears and our mourning and our pain. It is here that God banishes death. That is a perfect description of what it means to say  that Kingdom of God has come. God is Emmanuel, God who lives among us. That is the hope, the promise,  that we pray for every time that we say the Lord's Prayer: thy kingdom come ... on earth as it is in heaven.

Our Gospel sheds more light on this mystery. Jesus initiated this end time when God dwells with humans by becoming human himself. God, who is love, makes that love visible by clothing it in human form. God dwells with his people when God's love is made visible. Jesus gives us God's plan for continuing and increasing this presence of God: we are to love one another as Jesus loves us. Whew, what a command! Scripture scholars tell us that unlike the command to love in the other Gospels, which expand the concept of loving neighbor to include all, even our enemies, John's vision of this commandment is focused on the Church. The people Christ has gathered to himself is not only created but it is continued in its existence by this love, and by this love alone. It is the only reason for the Church's existence and the only visible sign that the Church lives and flourishes.

Our readings invite us to reflect on the Church's understanding that Communion is not just a bunch of individuals celebrating Eucharist together but the essence of Eucharist is that the Church itself is celebrating Eucharist, entering into the paschal mystery of Christ that creates and continues it. That is why the Church echoes Jesus' command in today's Gospel by commanding us to go to Mass each week. Going to Mass and receiving communion is loving one another as Jesus loves us. Not with some generic love of everyone but the specific love John's Gospel is speaking of, the love Jesus gave to create the Body of Christ which would endure till the end of time and which will bring into being the Kingdom of God here on earth.

So let us celebrate this sacrament of initiation week after week with serious intent. As we give thanks and then become formed more fully into the body of Christ which makes God present in our world, we help move the world closer to the time when we will have our tears wiped away and there will be no more mourning, no more wailing, no more pain and suffering, and in the end, no more death.

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