If you haven’t read or heard today’s Mass readings for this 6th Sunday of Easter and then return here for my thoughts.

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Today, heaven shines a spotlight on our mothers. I hope it will be a really blessed day for all you “Moms.” Every mother is a great gift to her family, and in the thoughts of many people throughout the ages she has the most important job in the world. 

I pray that all those who have the gift of a living mother thank God for her today - and that you’ll reach out in a special way to let her know how important she is to you.  Some of those mothers with whom you live, or are in close contact, are young enough and healthy enough to completely understand your kind words and gestures. Other mothers are older, perhaps ill, and in some cases unable to comprehend all you’re saying or doing - like those we visit in nursing centers. Reach out to them if you can. A word, a hug, a kiss, a phone call will communicate all that your heart feels.

And on this Mother’s Day our thoughts and prayers go out to all our mothers who have gone before us. Remember them in prayer today…that the Lord will bless them with eternal life, the greatest of all rewards. For they consistently made sacrifices for us.

My mother is dead twenty-one years now. I have thousands of memories of her. But I think the best is a message she gave her children so often. She told us how great our father was. She praised him all the time. How wonderful a gift to children when they repeatedly hear, “You have the best father in the world.” The statements she made about him not only led to our admiration for him but said as much about her…as she deflected attention away from herself. It was one of the ways I learned, at an early age, about what love is - which is the heart of Jesus’ words today.

And as I think about her today I think about my Dad’s undying commitment to her. That was always clear but it shone in a special way in my mother’s twilight years. For she was a victim of early onset Alzheimer’s…being just 63 when diagnosed. She spent 5 years at home under his constant care and when that was no longer safe, 11 years in a nursing home. He was at her side those 16 years as he was for all the previous years of their blessed marriage. Many of us have observed or already given the same kind of heroic love. And heroic love is what Jesus speaks of today.

At the Last Supper, just before he went out into the night to be arrested and crucified he said to his best friends, “Love one another, as I have loved you.” He really showed the depth of his love in those next hours. And reflecting on that love, decades later, St. John would write so emphatically, “God is love and anyone who fails to love can never really have known God.”

The words of Jesus and John are not the product of dreamy idealists out of touch with the real world. Love is never just a private emotion, nor mere romance. It’s something much more profound. It means truly caring for somebody, like a husband for a wife and a wife for her husband…and each one of us caring for those who come into our lives.

When we hear Jesus say, “the Father loves the Son,” what He means is that the Father lives for the Son - that everything He is…is for the Son.  And when we hear that the Son loves those He calls his friends it means He lives for us. And when He tells us to love each other as He loves us, that means that we’re being called to live for each other. For love is only real, and it only lasts, if it produces more love - as any married couple knows.

It’s a love that says: “Whatever happens, I’ll be there” - a love that’s willing to climb Calvary for someone else. “Love one another as I have loved you.”

Despite your differences…love one another. Despite the hurt someone has caused you…love one another. Despite the angers you’re nursing or the grudge you can’t let go…love one another.

The great task of the Christian is to love like Christ. Giving, when we know we may get nothing back…Sacrificing, even when it’s hard…For this is the way God loves.

Deeply. Mercifully. Eternally. 

The great challenge of this Gospel is to look at the people around us - all those we like and those we don’t, those we care for and those we don’t, those we respect and those we don’t - and love them. Are we courageous enough - generous enough, selfless enough, sacrificial enough - to love this way?

It sounds at first as if we’re being asked to do something impossible. For He tells us that the love with which we’re supposed to love one another is the love with which He’s loved us. Well, we can never expect to do this by relying on our own strength. We can only do this with God’s power - the same power that raised Christ from the grave. For we’re never alone. As Jesus said to his disciples at his Ascension, which we’ll celebrate this Thursday, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and then you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.”