Sweet Boundless Fire of Love

On this "Love Sunday" we again heard the words "love one another" from our Lord in the gospel ( John 13:34-35). I was reminded of similar words from our Archbishop Harry Flynn, spoken to the gathered crowd after the funeral Mass for Monsignor Schuler several weeks ago: Jesus' parting demand of his disciples, "remain in My love, remain in My love, remain in My love."

Love demands that we speak the truth to each other, whatever the cost. However, it seems that in the last few years our society has become less able to dialogue rationally with each other. In society at large, and even sometimes within the Church, discussion and civility have given way to Jerry Springer-like exchanges: yelling and inuendo, mixed with large doses of unfriendly, objectifying antagonism.

Here are some words of encouragement to love from St Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church, Dominican nun, stigmatist and counsellor to popes.

Oh sweet boundless fire of love,
how clearly you show your creature's magnificence!
For you have created everything to serve us,
and us you have made to serve you.

Let our hearts and our souls burst with love!
Let them be quick to serve
and stand in awe of the good gentle Jesus!

Easter: in the quiet tomb

This morning at the 10:00 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral of St Paul, Archbishop Flynn urged his hearers to consider Easter as a place, the empty tomb. There, God invites us to enter the quiet emptiness out of the nothingness of our own lives,... despair, struggle, defeat, hopelessness.

Once we look in and enter the tomb we become the object of a new creation, which God brings into new life out of nothingness.

How true!

"Faith in the Resurrection of Jesus says that there is a future for every human being; the cry for unending life which is a part of the person is indeed answered. Through Jesus we do know 'the room where exiled love lays down its victory.'

He himself is this place, and he calls us to be with him and in dependence on him. He calls us to keep this place open witrhin the world so that he, the exiled love mat reappear over and over in the world...

God exists: that is the real message of Easter. anyone who even begins to grasp what this means also knows what it means to be redeemed."

Benedict XVI