The Gospel for The feast of St Matthias Apostle is taken from John 15, 9th through the 17th verse. Jesus said to his disciples, as the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my love one another, as I love you.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I’ve called you friends because I’ve told you everything I’ve heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain. And so whatever you ask the Father in My name, he will give you.
This I command. Love one another. It’s not unusual for us to live in a world where we feel we have to perform for people in order to win their esteem or their respect or even their love. And the same was true in the Old Testament and the New Testament too. The people were struggling to understand why. What is it that the message of Jesus is going to bring to us?
It’s promised to bring joy, happiness, fullness. And it’s so interesting that it primarily works like this. If you allow God to love you as he longs to love you, you will be changed and you will be able to love those around you with a new energy and resonance. You have to be loved in order to love. And that’s why Jesus is so insistent in helping people to realize that the God who created them is the God who loves them, no matter who they are. He is their God, their father, their friend, their lover.
Take a few moments to reflect upon these images and then I will close with a prayer. Foreign closing prayer. All of us struggle with self esteem. And we live in a culture that tells us that we should be a certain thing or have a certain thing or look a certain way. And that’s all normal. But what we see in Jesus is a message that he knows heals the hearts of so many people that are feeling empty or not enough.
He loves us as we are. Knowing that, realizing that, believing that with our whole heart and soul is what grace intends to accomplish. And what is grace? Unmerited love. That’s what we need to feel flowing from God, our Father, we ask this in Jesus name.