Love One Another

Good morning, boys and girls.

This is an exciting day for you. Yeah.

I have a couple questions I want to ask you.

Tell me something that you love.

Your family. Okay. Very good.

What else? Your brother, Soccer, chocolate.

Shelter. Sports.

Anyone else? What do you guys love?

Jesus, you love Jesus.

Thank you Alexa.

I love lots of things too.

I love my iPhone.

I love my Apple Watch.

I love rugby and soccer. Yeah.

I love ice hockey.

I love pizza.

I love hiking.

And yes, I love my family and my brothers and sisters.

And I love Jesus.

We do not love them all the same way. Do we?

Do we love soccer or sports

the same way we love our mom and dad?

No, no, no, no, no.

For example, I love my dog Bella.

I love my computer.

My computer does not love me back.

Although I think it sometimes wants me back all the time.

But my dog loves me back.

Our parents love us back.

In fact, they love us first before we love them back.

They always love us.

But do they always love us?

Always! Not always!

When do they not love you?

When you do something bad?

They still love you.

They just do not like you for doing what is not very good.

They are just kind of annoyed.

They are just annoyed at you.

Boys, girls.

They may not like when you do something silly,

but they still love you.

They love you no matter what

Do parents tell us they love on some special days?

Birthdays, right?

They will tell you that is a really special day for you.

This is a special day for you, your First Communion Day.

This is what God is saying to you, that he loves you.

Except the difference is his love is really unconditional.

He loves us no matter what we do or no matter what we say,

no matter what we have.

No matter what else we love,

God will always, always love us.

And that is what we are celebrating.

When you celebrate today your first communion,

that is what we are celebrating now.

We celebrate it every Sunday, because why?

Because we need to be reminded of that, boys and girls.

Because in this world today, there are a lot of other stories we are told.

The stories we are told that you are only loved

if you wear a certain type of this or that,

or if you own a certain this or that,

or if you play a certain type of game,

then you only are loved for that.

Or if you say or do what is right.

But what God says to you, boys and girls, is that

you are loved for who you are as you are a child of God.

And that is why we come every week.

And you receive communion today because Jesus,

as the scripture says, loves everyone of you and he laid down his life,

just like your mom and dad lay down their lives every day for you.

They do everything for you.

They give everything to you.

Jesus did the same thing for us.

God laid down his life in Jesus' life

and he promises that no matter whatever happens,

that nothing will ever get in the way of that love.

So boys and girls, what the scripture then says today is

that we are called to pass that love on to others.

And that is why we come to the Eucharist every Sunday.

And you are coming to receive, become what we receive,

become the love of God for others poured out.

So boys and girls, this is a really important day for you.

But you are called to pass that love on to mom and dad

to pass that love on even to your brother and sister.

And guess what?

To everybody, even the people who you do not like,

you are called to pass that love on.

Can you do that today? Yeah. Yeah.

You will try. Okay. All right. Fair enough.

Okay, we will try. All right. Head on back.

God loves us not for what we have or what we do,

what we own or what we look like.

God loves us for who we are.

We know that intellectually, I guess we know that,

but we need reminders of it.

And in this world, there is so much coming at us

that we need reminders often for that purpose.

Sometimes there are things in our life

that will illustrate the love that God has for us,

that breaks it open for us.

We remember most of that love comes

through, as I was saying to the children,

comes through family to our parents,

our children, our siblings, our friends, and even from one another.

But there are, every now and then, moments in life

that are what I call inflection points

where we are reminded in a special way how much we are loved.

And those are critical to remember

because they make a difference in our life

and they help us to be love for other people.

Let me give you a personal example.

Many years ago when I was 24,

my best friend, Jim, was killed in a plane crash.

And his father did not take it well, Mr. Bryne.

About three days after Jim had died,

Mr. Byrne came to visit me at my home.

He knocked on the door and my father put him into the sitting room.

I came in and he and my father were having a conversation.

He had been drinking heavily as he was an alcoholic.

He went into an alcoholic binge drinking session.

And so he said to my father,

“I do not understand your God.

Why would he take my son in his prime?

I do not understand why your God does that.”

And my father did not answer that unanswerable question.

He just simply said,

“Mr. Byrne, I am sorry for your loss.

I can not imagine how painful this is,

but I know that Jim now is in heaven with all the angels and saints.

And that God is also with you in the midst of your pain.

I am sorry for your loss.”

Mr. Byrne went into a rage, and he said,

“I do not understand. Why did he take my only son.

You have ten sons and two daughters.

Why did he not take one of your 12?

Why did he not take Brendan?”

And he pointed right at me.

I was a little taken back, and he meant it, he wanted to exchange.

I was so taken back, I did not know what to say.

Actually, I was deeply hurt by it.

The tears started to well up in my eyes

and I did not know what to do with the tears

because as a young man back in 1989 in Ireland,

we did not cry a lot.

So I did not know quite what to do with them.

They were rolling down my face

and my father saw the tears in my eyes and knew it had hurt.

And so he said to Mr. Byrne,

“Mr. Byrne, I am sorry for your loss. I really am.

I am deeply sorry for that.

But I love all my children equally.

And if any one of them, including Brendan, was ever lost,

I would be equally as devastated as you are with your one.

My love for my children is not done as a calculator,

divided out equally among them in some mathematical way.

I love all of them completely and equally.

Now, I am sorry for your loss, and I know it is hurting you,

but it is gonna be okay.”

Then Mr. Byrne walked out.

The alcohol had done enough damage for one day.

My father then looked at me and he saw how upset I was and said,

“Brendan, you need to forgive him

because he did not mean that.

He was not speaking his truth.

He was speaking his pain and his suffering.

Your mother and I love you completely and absolutely.

There is nothing you will ever do or say

that will separate you from that love.

And if anything ever happens to us,

know that your father in heaven loves you even more than we do.

And there is nothing that will ever happen

that will separate you from that love.”

Of course, by that stage, I was crying even more.

But that was okay.

Why I tell you this personal story is

because it is important for us to know

that we are loved completely and truly.

Because we forget it.

We forget it easily in the travels of life.

Our children need to know that

they are loved completely and absolutely in our own imperfect way.

We want to say that today,

these young children are making their first communion.

It is God who is saying to us and to you, boys and girls,

that God loves you completely and absolutely.

And there is nothing that will ever separate you.

Remember this day because it is important.

Remember those wonderful good days for you are loved.

Your mom and dad will remind you often of their love for you.

But always remember God's love for you.

Once we feel loved like that, something inside of us changes.

We become different.

That is what Jesus says in the gospel today, to love one another.

Once we feel the love from God,

then we are called to pass that love to others.

There are so many in this world who need to feel that love,

who need to see and taste and feel that love.

We are part of that message.

We are part of that today.

The gospel and the readings say to love one another.

Today, we celebrate the love that

we have for one another in these children.

We want this to be a very special day that

we remember that God loves us,

not for what we do,

not for what we have,

not for what we look like,

but loves we for who we are.

We are children of God,

so pass that love on to others, to all love one another.