Who is responsible?

Homily

6th Sunday of Easter B2

5 May 2024

St. Lawrence Catholic Campus Center at the University of Kansas

AMDG

Who is ultimately responsible for my life?

I bet you think you are.  But you're wrong.  God is.

God is necessary. I am not.  He is the source of life. I am not.  Life is never what I make of it, nor whatever I want it to be.  Life is receiving and remaining in the sacred truth that life is a gift.  That makes God ultimately responsible for my life.

Let's ponder deeply tonight how this works. St. John puts it like this:  in this is love, not that I have loved God, but that he first loved me.  Love is not something I generate; quite the opposite, it is first received, as the Father takes the initiative to send His Son to love me where I cannot and would never love myself.

Have you ever considered how crazy this really is?  God takes responsibility for letting me down.  He blames Himself for my sins.  He blames Himself for my lack of trust, accusing Himself of not revealing his love in a more compelling way.  So He takes the initiative.  He takes the responsibility to save my life.

Who is ultimately responsible for your life?  I bet you still think you are, that your life starts and ends with you, but it doesn't.  Now I'm not telling you to be irresponsible for careless, mind you. I'm just asking myself to admit that my perfectionism, my hyper-focus on myself to the neglect of the greater things God is doing, will never work.  There's a reason for that.  I am not God, and I cannot work myself into perfection.  I am first loved before I can do anything, and unless I am first loved I can do nothing.  I cannot perfect myself, but I can only be loved into perfection.

Let's listen to more.  It was not you who chose me, but I who first chose you!  Again God is responsible.  He takes the initiative.

Want more evidence that your life is not about you?  There's plenty more! As the Father loves me, so I love you.  It never works for me to say that as I love God, so God loves me.  That's backward, to start with myself, if only I admit it.

There's still more.  I have called you friends because I have first chosen to tell you everything.  For a fourth time in tonight's Scriptures, Jesus says our relationship starts with Him. It always starts with His desire for me, His revealing all the attention and affection He has for me right not, His emptying Himself until He serves me as His friend, by His choice not mine.

Yet despite all this, I bet you started today like I did, with my ego, trying to generate trust and passion and joy from myself, forgetting that I would have none of these things - no faith, no desire, no happiness, if God didn't first choose to trust me, to suffer for me, and to delight in me.

Still think your life is about you?  You probably do. We all do. Yet it's just not true.

God is necessary today.  I am not.  And it's His great joy to take responsibility for your life.  You only need to receive and remain.

mj