4^th Sunday of Easter (B); April 25, 2021

Acts 4:8-12.  Ps 118.  1 Jn 3:1-2.  Jn 10:11-18

Deacon Jim McFadden

            Two lovers look at one another and say without any reservation: “I promise to be faithful to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life” (The Order of Celebrating Matrimony, p. 35). 

            A father holds his newborn daughter and from some vastness within him says, “I would die for you.”

            An inmate holds the hands of a terminally ill “cellie” and says, “Don’t worry; I’m not going away.”

            When we first hear the phrase “unconditional love,” it may seem like such a pipe-dream—a beyond-reach ideal, something that can only be attained in heaven.  But actually, we all have moments of unconditional love because there is not a moment in which we are not being intentionally and wholeheartedly loved by God, Who is love.  When we experience his love, we are empowered to open ourselves unreservedly to another and commit ourselves totally to the other’s good.  Like Jesus in today’s Gospel according to John, we often reach for “laying down our life” language to express what, at the moment, seems so clear and undeniable to us.  Unconditional love means everything and is forever.  We know it’s possible because Jesus has done it for us and, and as his Mystical Body, the Church, we are simultaneously called to do the same.

            Let’s look at this passage closely: 17. “This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.  18. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.  I have the power to take it up again.  This command I have received from my Father.”

            Unconditional love necessarily entails laying down one’s life for the other because, as St. John Paul II that is the Law of the Gift—namely the logic of divine love is expressed in total self-giving for the good of the other.  It’s important that we get this right because this passage touches on the meaning of redemption.  Sadly, there are some who believe that Jesus paid the price to earn the Father’s love.  Along this line, there are some who believe that Jesus died on the Cross to convince the Father that we were worth loving; if that were the case, that implies that the Father does not love us very much and ends up making God the Father an ogre, who demands blood money before he’s going to embrace his children.

            Jesus, however, is not proving himself to the Father; he’s not convincing his Father that we are lovable; he’s not paying some kind of blood money, wherein the Father sees it and says, “O.K., I’m convinced; I’ll allow these people into heaven because you’ve paid the price.”  That could never be because the Father is perfect love, which does not break or cause pain but rather heals and transforms the other.

            So, why did Jesus die on the Cross?  When Jesus sacrificed himself willingly on Golgotha, he is revealing to us that the Cross is somehow already in the heart of the Father.  The Father is the unconditional Lover and Jesus is the Beloved Son who is receiving the Father’s love.  God is total self-giving, sacrificial love.  The Son of God is revealing to the world on the Cross who the Father eternally has been.  The Son is becoming in space and time who the Father is.  That’s why Jesus is also known as Immanuel: God among us.

            People of God, love is inherently redemptive—healing is at its very core.  Self-giving is redemptive and Jesus is God’s self-giving in the world.  That’s why St. Paul would say in his Letter to the Colossians that “He is the image of the invisible God” (v. 1). All of this gives us the context for St. John’s famous quote from 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son for our salvation.” When we, in turn, enter into this Trinitarian love through Christ our Lord, uniquely present in the Eucharist, we’re becoming liberated, redeemed, and freed as he enters into the very core of our being.  As we have a stronger relationship with the one who is Risen, we now are empowered to have genuine relationships with each other and Creation. 

            This is it, brothers and sisters!  The understanding of who we are as the beloved children of God challenges us to keep our visionary commitment to “love all the days of my life” and “till death do us part.”  We continue to gaze on our children, grandchildren, friends, parish community, civil and other social relationships and affirm what Jesus has done for me, I will do for you: I lay my life down for you.  Amen.