5th Sunday Paschal. 2025 C

I have been thinking about how God through Jesus loves me. It is with a love that exceeds self-preservation, that God loves me. This is how Jesus commands that we love each other. This kind of loving glorifies God.

With a love that exceeds self-preservation, God through Jesus Christ, loves you and me.

Hear this from Paul to the Philippians:

make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.

3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,

7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. 8 Being found in appearance as a man,

He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 2:2-11. (from Biblehub.com).

God gave up Godly Identity. In Jesus, God emptied Himself of himself for love of you and me, and in the human Jesus, God experienced dis-connection, loss of identity becoming one of us and living our human life. (Letter to the Hebrews).

This he did, so that we might chose to share God’s life and glory.

Baptism. Confirmation. Marriage. Ordination. Holy Communion and anointing. Reconciliation.

These sacraments mean a “new heaven and a new earth.” These sacraments are the way that God lives with the human race, and I feel grateful, thankful, blessed and joyful!

God loves us from death to life.

God loves us from sin to salvation.

God loves us from shame to glory.

God loves us from sickness to sanity.

God loves us from selfish, to communion of persons; from I am to we are, from we are to I am.

When we have experienced God’s love, we are empowered, over the course of our lives, to love as we are being loved.

St. John tells us in a letter, that God so loves us, that he puts himself into our hands, and on our tongues.

Satan and his minions and his followers and those he has deceived, hate you and me with the hate of the fires of hell.

We are hated most, when we love with a love that exceeds self-preservation.

Our children for Confirmation chose the names of men, women and youth whose love exceeded self-preservation. Consider St. Gerard Majella: beatified in Rome on 29 January 1893 by Pope Leo XII

His testimony: "Here the will of God is done, as God wills, and as long as God wills."

Patron Saint of: Mothers but also, falsely accused people; a good confessions, (from online, 2025).

“At 27, Majella was controversially identified by a young pregnant woman as the father of her child. To avoid exposing the real father, Gerard accepted the blame silently. His religious superior Alphonse Liguori questioned him and, due to his silence, banned him from receiving Holy Communion. After several years, the woman revealed the truth on her deathbed, but also testified to Gerard’s holiness.” For this reason Gerard is also the patron of those who are falsely accused and the patron of a good confession.

It is into this love that we will baptize children today. In this love first holy communion was celebrated last week. In this love we Confirmed forty young people. In this love four men were ordained this month.

And in this love Robert Francis Prevost became the 267th Vicar of Christ, Pontifex Maximus (Chief bridge-builder), Leo the fourteenth, Holy Father of one billion Holy Roman Apostolic Catholics around the world.