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Sixth Sunday After Easter (Year B)
Saint Ignatius of Loyola Church, Boston College
May 10, 2015
Rev. Joseph M. O’Keefe, S.J.
With the coming of Mother's Day and in light of the horrendous news about
the devastating earthquake in Nepal, I have been reminded of a story that I heard a
while back. It is a poignant love story.
On May 12, 2008, seven years ago Tuesday, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit
Sichuan province in China. After the earthquake had subsided, when the rescuers
reached the ruins of a young woman's house, they saw her body through the cracks.
Her pose was strange in that she was kneeling on her knees like a person
worshiping; her body was leaning forward and her two hands were supporting an
object. The collapsed house had crushed her back and her head. With much
difficulty, the leader of the rescue team put his hand through a narrow gap in the
wall to reach the woman's body, hoping that she might, by some miracle, still be
alive. However, the cold and stiff body told him that she had passed away. He and
the rest of the rescue team left the house and went to search the next collapsed
building. For some reason the team leader was driven to go back to the ruined house
of the dead woman. Again, he knelt down and put his hand through the narrow
cracks to search the little space under the dead body. Suddenly, he screamed, "A
child! There is a child!" The whole team worked together, carefully removing the
rubble. There was a three-month old little boy, very much alive, wrapped in a
blanket under his mother's dead body. When her house was falling, she used her
body as a shield to protect him. A doctor on the team went to examine the baby.
After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone inside. There was a text message on
the screen. It said: "My dear little one, if you live, always remember that I love you.”
“Always remember that I love you.” Last words from the dying to the beloved.
In the 15th chapter of John’s gospel we also hear last words from the dying to
the beloved. Jesus speaks to his disciples in the context of his farewell discourse, set
in the context of the Last Supper. Jesus knew that his message and his actions would
soon lead to his death on the cross. As he faced death, he told his beloved disciples,
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” He continued, “And
“This I command you: love one another.”’
As we come to the end of the Easter Season, with Ascension Thursday coming
this week and Pentecost in two weeks, the scriptures invite us to reflect on love, the
love that raised Christ from the dead, the love that Christ has for us, the love that we
have for Him, and the love that we have for one another. In like fashion, at the end
of the fourth week of the Spiritual Exercises, in which the retreatant is invited to
meditate on the mystery of the Resurrection, Ignatius places the Contemplatio ad
amorem, the Contemplation to Attain the Love of God. In that contemplation,
Ignatius teaches two important truths. The first is that love ought to show itself in
deeds over and above words. The second is that, in love, one always wants to give to
the other all that one has. The Contemplatio ad amorem raises important questions:
What does it mean for me to love? How do I go about expressing my love? How do I
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show my love for God, for myself, for others, and for our world? How do I love those
who do not seem loveable? Where is God inviting me to lay down my life in love if,
like the woman in the earthquake, I am one day called to make the ultimate
sacrifice? And where is God inviting me to lay down my life in love here and now, in
the everyday, in the ordinary. As we ponder those very important questions,
Ignatius invites us to remember how Christ relates to us, Christ who set no limits on
love, Christ who practiced what he preached: “No one has greater love than this,
than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
Nearly two thousand years ago Saint John wrote to his followers, “Beloved,
let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by
God and knows God.” Today, we have among us living witnesses to that gracious
love, the mothers who are here at mass this morning. I would ask them to stand, as
they are able, so that we might pray with and for them.
God of Love, look upon the mothers present here.
Give them strength, they who taught their children how to stand and how to walk.
Give them love, they who taught their children how to speak, how to sing and how to
pray.
Give them a place at Your eternal dinner table, they who fed and nurtured their children.
In this life, give them good friends, health, joy, love, laughter, and pride in their children.
And in the life to come, may these women who lovingly held their children be carried
one day to Your divine embrace: there, for all eternity, to rejoice with family and friends,
with all of our mothers living and deceased, and with all the women who have shown us
the warmth and tenderness of maternal love.
We ask this through the intercession of Mary the Mother of God, the Mother of the
Church and our Mother. Amen.