How do I know I'm fully alive?

Homily

5th Sunday of Easter B2

28 April 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

How do I know I'm fully alive?  Does anybody out there know at this moment, whether you're fully alive?

It's a critical Easter question, for in this season we proclaim not only Jesus alive and risen from the dead, but that we too rise through Him to new and everlasting life?  Yet how does this work really?  How do I know this to be true, out of everything that I know to be true?  How do I know when I am fully alive?

The traditional way of asking this pivotal question is as follows:  do you know if you're saved?  Well, first of all, what does it mean to be saved?  I hope we can all agree that it's nothing less than being fully forgiven, healed, set free to live a new life, and to lay hold of a destiny to live forever in God.  To be saved is nothing less than to experience even now the fullness of life, which is why I like to pose the question in just this way.  How do I know when I'm fully alive?

Salvation must be more than a one and done profession of Jesus as my personal savior.  That's a great start, don't get me wrong, but everything about today's readings say there is more than simply believing in Jesus. We must also abide in Him completely, as a branch on a vine.  How do I remain in Him who is life itself? That's the real question of salvation!

St. John nails it for us today in the second reading.  He says we remain in Him not just by talking the talk, but by walking the walk.  We remain in Him by keeping His commandments of love, which correspond to the love of the Holy Spirit that is meant to dwell in you.

Catholics have always taught we are saved in just this way.  We become fully alive through faith and works, the two always working together for our salvation like they do in any healthy relationship.  Abiding in each other takes both words and actions, the two always reinforcing each other.  We must say I love you, but even more, we must do loving things, for talk can be cheap and actions speak louder than words.

So how do I know when I am fully alive?  Since none of us possess life in itself, but only as it is gifted to us, to be fully alive must mean to be fully attached to the source of life itself forever.  And guess what, I have good news for you!  The author of life desires nothing more today than to fully coinhere with you. If that is true, the fullness of life is staring you right in the face at Mass.

Jesus has invited us to lay hold of a shared life with Him, especially through the sacrament of the Eucharist, which is always and everywhere celebrated as the source and summit of the Church's life.  Could Jesus be any clearer on this very point?  Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him, and I will raise him on the last day.

Yet the same Jesus who always prunes us with his words reminds us that one of us at table with Him right now will betray Him, and it would be better for that man if he had never been born.  Thank God that Jesus has given us not only the Eucharist, but also confession!  In that same upper room, Jesus gifted confession as an Easter sacrament, so that if I have not kept God's commandments, and if I have done something that does not correspond to the love of the Eucharist, I confess before consummating my shared life and communion with Him.

A final time - how do I know that I am fully alive?  I can't do better than to remind myself of all that Jesus said, and to allow His words to prune me.  I live by abiding with Him fully in the Eucharist, and I remain by keeping His commandments to love Him above all things and to love you all as He has first loved me.  If I do an unloving thing, I confess so that the branch can be grafted back onto the vine which is its life.

That's it, disciples of Jesus. That's everything that Jesus said. That's how I know that I am fully alive.

+mj