Reflection for the 6th Sunday of Easter 2024

This is My commandment: love one another as I love you. 

Christ is Risen! He is truly Risen! Alleluia! 

On this Sunday in the Easter season, we are blessed to welcome a new member of God’s Kingdom through the waters of regeneration – rebirth into a completely new way of life. It is indeed a life of love.

Now, this causes us to raise a question as to Kingdom love, our Christian way of life. What’s all so different about it?

Indeed, people of every background provide love and charity for others. Most people regardless of religious affiliation, or no affiliation whatsoever love in ways aimed at the physical, emotional, psychological, relational, and economic well-being of others.

For Tallulah and us this is the difference. It is not the how, where, or work of love, but rather, its source, sustaining power, and goal.

For those in the Kingdom the source of love is the cross of Christ, the total self-giving of God for a people who neither deserved nor merited His concern. St. John tells us: “We love because He first loved us.” In the Cross our sins are forgiven, we are justified, accepted, and loved by God. By the cross fear and greed, the great barriers to love, are taken away as we trust in what God has done in Christ. So, the first difference between secular love and Christian love is that our love is rooted in the work of Christ and its impact in us.

Second, Kingdom love is sustained and shaped by the Holy Spirit, where secular love isn’t. St. Paul calls it the “fruit of the Spirit.” It is the Spirit that takes the death of Christ, causes it to be real for us, and gives us new hearts so that the death of Christ has a love-producing effect on us. The work of the Spirit sustains and shapes Christian love, but not the love of the world.

Finally, Christian love has a radically different goal, All the good we do in our loving has a Godward goal. Our love has more than a here and now goal and effect. Our love is not just for the present, rather it is forever because its emphasis is what is truly good for all, bringing all to God in Christ.

All that was about how our loving is different, what our baptismal faith changes about our outward loving. But there is more. Our commitment to Kingdom love must bring about deep change in us. We cannot remain just as we are. Within ourselves we must be fully convicted of our love’s shortcomings and work to grow our love so to meet Christ’s commandment.

Reflection for the Solemnity of the Institution of the Polish National Catholic Church 2022

Made whole.

He will not break off a bent reed, nor put out a flickering lamp. He will persist until he causes justice to triumph.

Jesus came to fulfill what Isaiah had written about centuries before. Isaiah writes about a ‘bruised reed.’ and a ‘smoldering wick.’ Jesus came, not to destroy the reed or put out the wick, but to take brokenness and the smoldering away. Jesus has healed and re-ignited us. Jesus has brought us into the Kingdom, into lives vastly different.

As we journey through this Lenten season, we reflect and act on our call to be true citizens of the Kingdom, to live up to our call. We look at our inward selves and our outward actions and reform them through more ardent prayer, sacrifice, study, worship, and giving. We come to really connect with the fact that those in the Kingdom live like that year-round, not just during Lent.

One day a Rabbi walked into a classroom full of Jewish religious students. The class was full of excitement. Rabbi, Rabbi, they said in unison, the Messiah has come. The Rabbi walked past the students and went to the window. He turned around, went to his desk, and told his students to sit. He said: The world looks no different; therefore, the Messiah has not yet come.

This is a powerful statement.  We know the Messiah; the Christ has come. We know that He is Jesus, the Son of God. Yet the world looks little different with its wars, obscenities, angers, covetousness, and all the other evils that surround us. What has changed?

One hundred twenty-five years ago a group of people looked about them and said the very same thing. They were immigrants, faithful and hardworking, but their lives were not getting any better. They were persecuted and called names. Their pastors continually castigated them. How could they have a Messiah if nothing changed?

They joined together and in a great act of faith and trust in Jesus and organized the Polish National Catholic Church. It would be faithful to the teachings and structures of the pristine undivided Church. It would have the passion of the first Christians who not only believed but acted on the fact that they had been healed and ignited by the Messiah. It would be the Kingdom Church Jesus had established, where they, their descendants, and anyone seeking the Kingdom could fully live out the Kingdom life, be the change Jesus called us to carry out, where life is indeed different, holy, loving, giving, and self-sacrificing.

So here we are in this body called the Church, with all necessary to live the Kingdom life fully, to bring about justice, to live in dignity together as Jesus’ body. So let us continue in prayer, sacrifice, study, worship, and giving. Let us continue to be different and call others to be saved, to share in life that is vastly different because of Jesus.