6th Sunday Of Easter
Fr. Mark Gatto
Preached: May 5, 2024
Recently, I was at one of the sessions for the formation of Permanent Deacons, as I am the Director of Formation for Permanent Deacons in our Diocese. This year we have one candidate who just had a new baby. On these Saturday sessions, the wives normally join their husbands and we have Mass half way through the Saturday session.
This couple brings their new baby to the sessions as she is breast feeding. I was celebrating the Mass that day. After distributing communion I went down to bring communion to this wife who was holding her baby. As soon as I gave her communion I realized that the reason she could not come forward is that she was breast feeding her baby. This is the first time I think I have given communion to a mother while she was breast feeding!
But, what a wonderful connection. In communion, it is Jesus, the bread of life, feeding us from his very life just as this mother was feeding her child from her very self. We can really speak of the Mass as a school of love.
In John’s Gospel we hear Jesus say to his disciples, “You are my friends.” This is how God speaks to us through Jesus. Calls us friends. In the reading from the first letter of John, it simply says, “God is Love.”
There is a lot of discussion today about education, and in particular, Catholic education. The most important education that is needed for humanity, for each person to become a fully alive human being, and for the human world to become a place of peace, is education in love.
Jesus, is the model of the human being. In Jesus we see the model of self-giving love. He says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” In Jesus we have the great teacher and model of love. In the Mass we enter into a school of love with Jesus.
In the Mass we spend time with Jesus and there we are able to be educated in love. The church
teaches that we experience Jesus in four ways at the Mass.
First, we experience Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, the bread of life in which we receive the real presence of Jesus. Like a mother breast feeding, Jesus feeds us with his very self.
Second, we experience Jesus in the Word of God proclaimed. Jesus is speaking to our hearts. The challenge for us, like in any relationship, is to learn to listen. To pay attention to what Jesus is saying to us through these readings. To do this well it is helpful for us to read and pray with the readings for Sunday during the week before the Mass.
Third, in the priest presiding at Mass, we are to experience Jesus gathering us together. The priest is a sacrament of Jesus. Of course, we priests are very ordinary human beings, so the challenge is to see through faith to Jesus working through us. The challenge for each priest is to try to reflect the self-giving love reflected in Jesus, as we give our life away in service. Of course, be patient with us in our weaknesses!
Fourth, we experience Jesus in the Assembly, the people of God gathered together for the Mass. For the church is called to be the body of Christ. Sometimes this is also hard to recognize. But, we need to keep awake to the presence of Jesus.
An example is when a baby is crying or children are distracting, instead of seeing that as a distraction at our Mass, we should open ourselves to recognize Jesus in that distraction. Years ago in a previous parish, I remember a young boy who wanted to be an altar server. He had some form of attention deficit and was very restless. He just could not sit still. But, he was so excited about being able to serve at Mass.
After Mass one elderly woman who usually sat behind the servers came to me as she was very bothered by this restless server. She said he was disturbing her Mass and wanted me to remove him as a server. The self-giving love reflected in the Mass had become a self serving thing for this woman. She was failing to recognize Jesus with her in the assembly, including this restless boy serving at Mass.
In fact, for me as a priest, one of the most important ways that Jesus is with me is through you the people of our parish. Jesus is the model of our humanity, the vision of self-giving love. The Mass can be a school of love for us. We need to allow Jesus to be with us and to spend time with Jesus at the Mass.
Coming to us in the Blessed Sacrament, speaking to us in the Word, guiding us in the priest presiding and also present to us in the assembly of the People of God gathered with us. God is love. The Mass is a school of love in which we are nourished by God as a baby being fed is nourished by its mother.
