FAMILY Love
May 20, 2007

Readings for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Reading 1: Acts 7:55–60

Responsorial Psalm: Ps. 97:1–2, 6–7, 9

Reading 2: Rev. 22:12–14, 16–17, 20

Gospel: Jn. 17:20–26

Link to Readings

By Father Tony Gargotta

In the Gospel, Jesus prays for us all to be one. He prays for us all to be one as He and the Father are One. He also prays for us to be one by His being in us in the same way the Father is in Him. This prayer is beautiful. Jesus is praying for unity. Jesus is saying in this prayer that He and the Father have unity and He wants that same unity with us.

Parents can identify well with this prayer: Parents want their children to always be one with them as a family, and they want their children to build a beautiful unity with a spouse. When there is disunity—such as when an adult child drifts from the love of a family—there is pain, hurt, and sadness. There is also pain, hurt, and sadness when parents experience problems in one of their adult children’s marriages. They have pain and sadness for their child’s hurt.

It is natural for us to want to preserve the unity of a family and to want that unity to be reflected as our children begin a new family. It is natural because it is how we are created. In Genesis, we hear we are created in the image and likeness of God. Since God is a Supreme Spiritual Being, we are not created in His physical image and likeness, but rather in His Spiritual image and likeness. This image and likeness is His love. God is a Trinity of three persons who love each other perfectly. If we are made in His image and likeness, then we have the ability to love like God—that is, perfectly.

The Cross of Love

God’s perfect love is a selfless, self-giving love. Jesus expresses that love to us in giving His life for us on the Cross, in stripping Himself of the glory of heaven to become human and offer His life on behalf of our sins. He did this through the Cross. Referring back to the prayer Jesus prayed in the Gospel today, that prayer is the Cross. A cross is made of a vertical and a horizontal beam. In this prayer, Jesus give us the vertical beam by praying for us to be one with Him: “. . . I in Them.” He gives us the horizontal beam by praying: “. . . that they all may be one.”

The Trinity’s perfect love is a love of each of the three centered on the other two. The Cross is the avenue to express love, the love that we are created in as God’s image. Jesus used the Cross to express to us His total self-giving to us. As Christians, images of Christ, we must use the cross to express that love to others and to God. Through the Cross, Jesus did not think of Himself. His entire focus was on the Father and doing His will (the vertical beam), and on us, offering His life as a ransom for us (the horizontal beam). We are created in this image, the image of God. Jesus is the image of God in human form. We as Christians, therefore, must live in the image of Jesus Christ and bring the unity Jesus prayed for alive in the word through the cross, the Cross of Love.

The Cross of Love brings us back to the identity of family. Above, I spoke of a family to which we can all relate, our relatives and immediate families. The Cross of Love and the prayer Jesus prayed, increases that family from physical blood relations to spiritual relations with all people, as well as with God: We are all brothers and sisters in Christ, and God’s adopted sons and daughters. The Cross of Christ compels us, therefore, to live out Family on all levels with a selfless, self-giving love. Yet what have we done? We do not have unity in community, we do not have unity among Christians, and we often do not have unity with our relatives.

This lack of unity is caused by selfishness and self-centered ways of living. In the community, we do not want to be bothered with the needs of others because we are striving for our own ambitions, striving to get ahead as measured by the world. We do not have unity among Christians because for hundreds of years, people want their way of thinking to be right and ultimate and do not want to live out the Cross of Love. It begins with a few compromises here and there, then the picking and choosing of what is the easiest way for me to believe in God. We often lack unity among our relatives when we do not want to admit our wrongs. Our pride hurts all the levels of family.

Forget About Me; I Love You

In these three levels of family I have mentioned—community, church, and our own relatives, as well as our Family as one with God—unity can be very easily obtained through the Cross of Love by truly living out the word family. F-A-M-I-L-Y = Forget About Me, I Love You. This is what it means to be family on all levels, this is what Jesus’ Cross screamed out to us: Forget About Me, I Love You.

We all dream of peace. We pray for wars to stop. We love the stories of people helping each other. We love when someone stands up for the underdog. We love a good love story, which is usually based on self-giving love. These touch our soul, the depth of our being, again because this is how we are created. These are the reflections of the image of God that we are created in. Let us all be FAMILY and share in the Cross of Love. Imagine us all being One, us together and with God. This is our destiny! But the destiny will only be a reality though the Cross of Love: Forget About Me, I Love You.

Fr. Tony Gargotta is a priest of the diocese of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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