Thursday May 2, 2024

“Obeying because we love is a mature faith.”

Good News Reflection for:

Thursday of the 5th Week of Easter
Memorial of Saint Athanasius, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
May 2, 2024

Today’s Prayer:

Dear God, I want to obey You today; help me to stay close to You. Thank You for being so good to me; I love You and I want to love You more. Lord Jesus, be my joy. When I am tempted to sin, help me to love others more fully. I want to remain in Your love; help me to obey the call to love. Amen.

Subscribe to Today’s Saint Quote & Prayer:
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Today’s Readings:

Acts 15:7-21
Ps 96:1-3, 10
John 15:9-11
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/050224.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-may-2-2024

The supernatural joy of loving obedience

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus spells out the three basic elements of faith: obedience, love, and joy. Love is the center; it holds obedience and joy together. When we disobey, it’s because we don’t understand why it’s unloving; we don’t realize our sin interferes with our ability to love and to be loved. On the other hand, when we obey because we love, we experience great joy.

Obeying because we love is a mature faith. As children, we first obeyed because we feared punishment. To experience joy, we have to let go of childish reasons for obeying God’s commands. Adult obedience is this: We love God so much that we want to follow Jesus in every way and in every circumstance, because we know that he loves us and that his commands are always based on love (even when we don’t understand how so), and we know that we can trust him. We’d be foolish to disobey.

And we love others so much that we don’t want to sin against them.

Love is like the air around us: We can close ourselves up and never breathe the air, and thus we die. Likewise, we can close our hearts and never receive the love that is permeating from God in every moment, and thus our souls slowly die. But when we obey God, imitating the holiness of Christ by following his commandments, we unite ourselves to him and therefore we’re immersed in his love and therefore we experience unworldly joy.

If we really understand what occurs in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, joy is our primary feeling as we emerge from the confessional. It’s a joy that comes from rediscovering that despite our disobedience, God still loves us, and that by reconciling with him we have opened ourselves to receive and experience his love more fully again.

Consider any command that you have trouble obeying, whether from the Bible or Church teachings. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you how this command is based on love. In what ways are you missing or misunderstanding the love that’s inherently there?

In today’s first reading, the first Christians had to learn to stretch their love for God to include the Gentiles. We all need to allow God to stretch us beyond our current limits of love. To grow in holiness, we have to grow beyond old, familiar ways of dealing with the laws that we dislike and the people who are unlikable. That’s the secret to finding supernatural joy.

Here’s a great prayer for starting each day:

“Dear God, I want to obey You today; help me to stay close to You. Thank You for being so good to me; I love You and I want to love You more. Lord Jesus, be my joy. When I am tempted to sin, help me to love others more fully. I want to remain in Your love; help me to obey the call to love.”

To help you reflect further on this, go to our WordByte called: “Examination of Conscience based on the 10 Commandments” @ https://wordbytes.org/spiritual-growth/10commandments-2/.

© 2024 by Terry A. Modica

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