Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
The Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS) is a centre for research and formation that promotes spiritual formation and renewal, drawing on the rich resources of the venerable Carmelite tradition.
It is an apostolate of the Anglo-Irish Province of the Discalced Carmelites, based at the Carmelite Priory at Boars Hill, Oxford, England.
OUR MISSION
CACS strives to achieve its mission through structured study and formation programmes in spirituality from the Carmelite perspective, especially Prayer and Spiritual Direction. At the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, you are welcome to enter into the silence where God’s voice is heard in prayer, word and sacrament, inviting you to journey ever more deeply into a place of growth and wholeness. Our goal is to bring people to experience a life-transforming friendship with God through a lived experience of Carmelite spirituality that is authentic to its biblical roots.
Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS)'s Podcast
Fifth Sunday of Easter
FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER
Word & Wisdom is a weekly reflection on the Sunday’s scriptures and the wisdom of the Carmelite tradition. It promises to offer you real spiritual food to sustain you on the journey.
This Word and Wisdom Podcast is brought to you by the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality, Oxford (carmelite.uk.net).
To receive audio and written copies, subscribe by emailing podcasts@cacs.org.uk
To connect with our Living Prayer Podcast on Youtube, kindly click: https://www.youtube.com/@CACSOxford
In our readings today, Jesus gives us a new commandment. I give you a new commandment, love one another just as I have loved. You also must love one another.
By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples. Blessed John Soreth tells us that we must learn how to love from love himself. Jesus has loved us and teaches us how to love as he loves.
What is fundamental to this commandment is that we must first know how God, Jesus, loves us so as to love in the same way, with much more capacity and frequency. John also tells us, for no greater love has a man than to lay his life for his friends. So, Jesus has loved us sacrificially and unconditionally and has commanded us to love the same.
That is the only way people will come to acknowledge that we are Christians. We must be ready to lay down our lives, to make sacrifices, to love, even when it is painful and unfavourable, as the best way to imitate Christ. Teresa of Calcutta tells us, love until it hurts, and unless it hurts, it is not love.
The test of true love is the willingness and ability to sacrifice for a loved one. The psalm tells us that the Lord is kind and full of compassion, slow to anger, abounding in love, being kind, compassionate, tolerant of people's faults, mistakes and offences, and accepting them are ways of expressing this love of God. However, it can come with a lot of suffering because we must be dead to our selfishness, to our ego, our greed, our jealousy.
We must be dead to our impulses in order to truly respond to this commandment of God. These are some of the things that make us build walls around us, instead of building bridges that will help us reach out to people. We are so afraid and insecure.
Saint Paul tells us bluntly in the first reading that we all have to experience, to suffer, many hardships before we enter the Kingdom of God. We live in a society where everything promises to ease the pains of suffering and hardship. Everyone wants a smooth sail.
Worst still, many preachers talk so much about the Gospel of Glory, devoid of the cross. We feel and believe that the more we reject pain and suffering, the more advanced our society is. Our readings today challenge that opinion.
They give us a different recipe.
Suffering, hardship are necessary for salvation. Saint Paul also tells us that we make up for what remains in the sufferings of Christ.
It is a privilege that leads to salvation to participate in the sufferings of Christ. This is why Saint John is privileged to be shown the new creation of God, the new heaven, in our second reading. This new city is a place where God will wipe away all tears from people's eyes.
There will be no more death and no more mourning or sadness because God will dwell among his people. This is not a physical city that is being described but a state of being whence we love one another unconditionally and can live for the others as commanded by Jesus in the Gospel. Such a city, such a church will be the physical and prophetic reality where the presence of God is uniquely and practically felt.
Such a community does not fall from heaven. It is built by all of us and to achieve this we need God's grace and God gives his wisdom, grace and spirit to build such a relationship where his presence is felt. We begin in our respective homes and families since charity begins at home and by this people will know that you are my disciples.
If you love one another as I have loved you.