Remain in Me

Originally published May 6, 2012

Fifth Sunday of Easter 2012 B

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles, and he reported to them how he had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus.  Acts 9:27

Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. 1 John 3:18

I am the vine, you are the branches.  Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.  John 15:5

Piety

Piety has its start in seeing the Lord.  Good people speak the presence of the Lord.  The Saints make him real by their lives.  Christ and God live in the good we do out of love.  Love gives presence to the Lord in our lives.  Our piety is the lived love of our lives seen in how we offer our lives for each otter.  Piety is seen in us by the ways the Lord is reflected in what we say and do.  That is all the more true when we do what we do in the name of the Lord.  Like Paul in the 9th chapter of the Acts we need to speak out boldly in the name of the Lord.  We must love not just in word or speech.  We must speak out in deed and truth.

Study

We study the words of Christ and admire the simplicity of what looking at his Cross offers us.   Christ is the embodiment in human form of divine love.  Christ is so much more than an idle word.  His life is the God word for all of our hearts.  We are branches on the vine of God’s love for us in his Son.  Christ in offering his life for us embraces us in all the ways we let his dying on the cross make up for the ways we have fallen short of who we are meant to be.  The deeper look at Christ open us up to the truth of who we can be in God’s love in Christ.  We become God’s love to the world in the life we give to Christ by our words and actions in his name.

Action

The best of all the actions in our lives is seen in how we keep the commandments.  The commandments are the revelation of God’s way that things should be done.  Keeping the commandment s allows us to love even as Christ has loved us.  We know that Christ is in us by the Spirit he has given us.  The good fruits of the actions of our lives reveal Christ remaining in us through the Spirit he gave us.  By the fruits of our work Christ is revealed in our lives.  Christ is the ideal of our lives.  How we live in him is seen by all the ways we try to do what he would do.  Christ is the ideal answer to the meaning of life.  He gives us in his words and deeds the statement of what love is all about by his embrace from the Cross.