Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter

25 years ago, Irish athletics had a world-class star. Her name was Sonia O’Sullivan.  

After all these years, unexpectedly, last Sunday, four other Irish female athletes, Aoife Lynch and Kate Doherty from Dublin, Sarah Quinn from Mayo and Sophie Becker from Wexford, took second place in the World Relays event. This was their first ever international podium finish and that, along with what their teammates achieved, has been dubbed by the media ‘a breakthrough weekend for Irish athletics’. One of the monks here drew my attention to this great success because it took place in Poland, in the stadium, which is just down the road from where I lived for more than 20 years.   

Now, although these four did not win the race – naturally the Poles were the winners – to my mind they did something truly remarkable. Not only did they do their very best, but in the words of a member of the Irish men’s relay team, they put Ireland back on the map. I was very struck by what one of them said after the event: ‘We had nothing to lose and everything to gain and we gave it our all’. They gave it their all. What an experience for all of them; a new chapter in their lives opened up.

All this effort was to win a perishable prize. What we Christians aim at in our daily spiritual journey is something infinitely greater.

What way are we to follow? It is Jesus Christ, of course, the way. Some challenging questions remain for each of us: do I give of my all on a daily basis? Am I genuinely committed to making a breakthrough in my Christian life? 

Jesus tells us: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’. This commandment to love one another, which we think of as a new commandment, isn’t actually new at all. It has been with us since the beginning of time. What is new is that Christ laid down his life for us to overcome the power of Satan and bring a new way of life. And this is the real breakthrough.

Christ’s victory opened up a new chapter in the history of humanity. Christ did all of this to fully restore our fallen nature. His death, his crushing the Devil and his resurrection from the dead are the decisive moments in history. We need to appreciate their importance. We need to imitate Jesus in his death, so that we may have a renewed life in him. Dying to our sins, with Christ, however challenging this may be, is the only way to arrive at a genuine understanding of what Jesus means by ‘love one another as I have loved you’. Our breakthrough is achieved by hard work, leading to a transformed existence where we become victors with Christ.

The Irish athletes were not afraid of hard work and they are now on their way to the Olympics. In our spiritual race we have nothing to lose either. Let’s follow Christ in our race toward the heavenly city. Let’s prove victorious and gain the greatest prize of all.

Rev. Jarek Kurek OSB

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