My sister was thirteen and I was eleven when our mother died. Before she passed, our mother, a deeply prayerful woman, asked that we be brought to her bedside. She embraced us, prayed passionately for us, then spoke her final words. With great certainty, she assured us that although she was “going home”, God would be with us always. She impressed upon us her dreams for our lives. We were troubled and perplexed, but after her death, as we pursued our life’s journey, we often remembered and came to understand her profound words that are now etched into our hearts forever. Her loving spirituality became our source of hope and guidance, the mothering spirit that directed us into Christ’s love.
Remembering, looking back at God’s blessings, is an integral part of our faith journey. We need constant reminders that God’s love will never let us go. As it was in the past, love is with us today and will be tomorrow. In the Old Testament, the children of Israel were often admonished to remember God’s mighty acts of love in liberating them from Egypt and leading them into Canaan. To forget God’s love is to be led away from God.
In this Sunday’s Gospel (John 14:23-29), Jesus said, “I have told you this before it occurs so that when it does occur, you may believe.” Jesus left final words with His disciples so that after His death, they could look back and be awakened to discern His love more clearly. We can only imagine how profound an impact, remembering and understanding Jesus’ final conversation must have had on His disciples!
Jesus said, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” To love Christ is to be brought into the love of the Father. The Father and the Son are One. Looking back and discerning Christ’s absolute, sacrificial way of love meant that the disciples were being called into a life of being the living presence of love in the world. This meant making the choice to love Christ more and more, abandoning self-centered desires in order to live into His commandment to love.
To enable this loving self-abandonment, Christ promised that the Father and Son would “make our home with them.” Christ would dwell in the disciples’ souls in the Person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit would remind the disciples of all that the living Christ said and did. Further, the Holy Spirit would guide the disciples in understanding and interpreting Christ’s words. After Christ’s death and resurrection, His promise was fulfilled as the disciples were guided by the Holy Spirit in remembering, interpreting and understanding the profoundness of Christ’s divine love. By faith, the disciples were transformed into Apostles who expressed their love for Christ by abandoning themselves to spread the gospel joyfully, even when persecuted.
Each of us is called into God’s intimate love. To guide our growth, we have four profoundly rich Gospels, the stories of those who, led by the Spirit, recorded Jesus’ words and deeds. We too are privileged to look backward at the Sacred Scriptures and discern amazingly powerful proof of Christ’s love that stirs our movement into Eternal love.
Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, guide us by Your absolute wisdom that as we read, mark and inwardly digest the Gospels, we discern Christ’s abundant love, and are embraced into intimate union with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
