Thursday, May 23, 2019

Daily Homilet

John 15:9-11
Jesus said to his disciples:
"As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father's commandments
and remain in his love.

"I have told you this so that
my joy might be in you and
your joy might be complete."

- What is the love that is spoken about here?  As the Father loves me so I love you.  The Greek written here is agape love, a love that looks after the good of the other person. Agape love transcends and is to remain permanent regardless of circumstance. No that's powerful! Imagine that someone loves you despite your failures, your short comings, your bad treatment of others, including themselves. This is the agape love of parents toward their children.  So often children only see the restriction or a reprimand and lack the foresight to know / see that the parent is trying to protect them from harms way.  Again, in spousal relationships require an agape love, putting and caring for others first, a sacrificial love, in order for the marriage to be blissful, joyful, and fulfilling. Why? Because the circumstances of the events are not to dictate how they are to respond. But rather, agape loving each other, they choose to respond sacrificially, choosing to lay down their first or immediate desires in order to inject a healthy dose of godly love back into a crisis, event, or situation often thrown at them. 
In the end, this is why Jesus is able to say, "I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete." May the Lord Jesus' sacrificial love cover you all the days of your life so that His caring protection may free you from uncecessary pain and suffering, and that what remains in difficulty we may bear in love and maybe even a bit of joy knowing that in the Lord's eternal dwelling shall our joy be complete.

Fr. Kyle