May 25, 2014
6th Sunday of Easter
1st Reading: Acts 8:5–8, 14–17
2nd Reading: 1 P 3:15–18
Gospel: Jn 14:15–21
Jesus said to his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever, that Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him for he is with you and will be in you.
“I will not leave you orphans, I am coming to you. A little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me because I live and you will also live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me, and I in you.
“Whoever keeps my commandments is the one who loves me. If he loves me, he will also be loved by my Father; I too shall love him and show myself clearly to him.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
This story throws light on the mystery of God’s love for us. A nurse escorts a young guy to the bedside of a dying old man. “Your son is here,” she whispers to the patient. He is heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack. He reaches out his hand and the young guy tightly wraps his fingers around it, squeezing a message of encouragement.
The young guy sits at the bedside holding the dying man’s hand and offering gentle words of hope. As dawn approaches, the patient dies. The nurse comes and offers him some words of sympathy. To the surprise of the nurse the young guy asks, “Who was that man?” The startled nurse replies, “I thought he was your father?”
“No, he was not my father,” he answered. “Then why didn’t you say something when I took you to him?” asks the nurse. He replies, “I also knew he needed his son, and his son just wasn’t here. When I realized he was too sick to tell whether or not I was his son, I knew how much he needed me. (From the internet).
Something similar happened to us. Somebody else’s Son came to restore us to spiritual life. After that we were also given a Helper, the Holy Spirit to guide us. To have the third person of the Holy Trinity for a helper is nothing less than a vip treatment, a royal one, in fact. Loving God in return is supposed to come as a matter of course. Amor con amor se paga! But since not everyone is grateful, the Lord has given love as a command to all.
The Love Commandment is not a walk in the park because it involves not just loving God but loving our nasty neighbors. But the desire to make a return to the Lord changes the way one looks at the command to love the neighbor. The love commandment becomes for him an offering of gratitude to the Lord. —Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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