HOMILY PRONOUNCED BY MONS. DIEGO MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY.
V SUNDAY OF EASTER.

Sunday, May 6th. of 2007

TO CONSTRUCT IN LOVE

My dear brothers: God has manifested to us His merciful love of father in His loved son. We can not deny, as believers, that the most beautiful and sublime thing that has happened to our lifes is to consider ourselves as objects of His love. We just need to live according to this gift (His gift).

But Sunday to Sunday, the Lord meets us to help us to reach that thing that we need for our own wellbeing here in the Earth, to achieve the eternal life, and of course, for His glory. “the glory of God is the man living in fullness” as San Ireneo would say.

Brothers, as Jesus lived it. In fact, He only lived to give glory to His Father with His life; a life given in love until His death in the cross, for love to His brothers. His death which was accepted in love was not other thing that the perfect expression of His obedient love to His father, and merciful and brotherly love to the humanity. That´s why Jesus says, in the Gospel, when Judas left the supper to betray Him: Now, the Son of the man has been glorified, and God also has been glorified in Him.

Jesus saw the croos in spite of the anguish that produced to him, as a liberation: as the victory of good over the forces of bad. The glory of God consists in this. But it also implies the manifestation of the infinite mercy of God which has given His Son to us. Brothers, it seems that Jesus, after urging Judas to decide to make that thing that he had made, feels himself reaching the goal to which He became in one of us: to realize the salvation for the humankind. Jesus is happy, among anguish and sadness, because His father glorifies Him exalting Him over the whole creation. (Flp 2, 10-11).

In the last supper, after the last teaching through the lavatory of the feet, and of the beginning of the outcome of His passing for this world, the Lord Jesus left the new commandment of love. Jesus never had taught something that He did not practice. What He taught was always endorsed by His example. But the biggest proof was there to give it to us, which was His sacrifice in the cross, but He gave previously us this lesson, in a way of testament and commandment. This is called the new commandment, in fact, this is the new one because it will take Him to His perfection  in the cross. Thus, as He says later, nobody has a greater love that the one who gives his life for his friends (Jn 15,13).  

It is not about loving, not even like we love ourselves, because that was already ordered in the old law (Lv 19,18); even more, it is not reached, because many times we do not know how to love ourselves. No, Jesus commands us to love saying “like I have loved you”. It means until giving life for those who we love.

Through the fulfillment of this command of Jesus, it is as He wants us to identify ourselves with Him. It means that is very good to know His doctrine, and to live religiously, but what really must distinguish us from the other human beings that look for good, and they practice it, it is the capacity to love as Jesus. That´s the thing that makes us true disciples.

If all those that are called Christians have present this central rule of faith, and we fulfilled it, we with all the men and women of good will will be able to construct already in the Earth a community that has as a model the holy city of the celestial Jesuralem. The city-wife about wich the Apocalypse speaks to us. This new city corresponds exactly to the new commandment. My brothers, we have a city with its law.

The church, community of new women and men, is the announced city, but already present, where already exists the possibility of living new relations between us, the members that formed it, and with the world, because the relations with God have been renewed in Christ. 

We are in the world, my dear brothers, constructing the new civilization, the one that is based on the commandment of love. We are not in heaven yet, but we walk to it constructing in love, a better world. This is the most excelent proof that we are disciples of Christ: that we are able to understand each other from a dialogue of respect, that implies capacity to listen and to tolerate. And even more, it demands to fulfill permanently the command of the Lord.

Today, we live, my dear brothers, in our country and in the world, a deep desire to construct a more adult and responsable society. That is necessary. But unfortunately it seems that it is done without God and His commandments. What is the sense of looking for peace, solidarity, justice and righ with out God?, Without Him all the efforts are destined to the failure. The man is not the owner of the history, but he is the dynamic protagonist. With God he can achieve much for his own benefit, and for the glory of God.

A new world, a new country with a rich Christian tradition, it is just possible with God in Christ. The elements of a new civilization can not be others that love and law; the respect between the citizens. The respect to life in all its stages, not only in its extreme stages, but also in the intermediate ones, with the harmonic development of all the children, adolescents and youth people with equality of opportunities, as well as the respect to the fecund and productive maturity of many with justice, and of others of their venerable and wise oldness: this is respect to life.  

For us the Christians, today more than ever, it must be clear, that justice and mercy are necessary to construct a country in the solidarity and with a solid development, that is equal to peace; but being still a noticeably catholic country, we can not ignore that that is impossible if it is not sustained in the God´s love which has been given us in Christ.

My brothers, let us put our trust in our little girl and sweet Lady this desire of allowing to ourselves to love by Jesus to be able to love like Him, and to construct a new country, because She always lived like favorite daughter of the Father.

Amen.