Good rewards do not always come easily. Anyone who has ever participated in any sport can attest to this because sports require constant practice in order for a player and team to get better. The children of our parish school should know this well because they have spent the past couple of weeks preparing nonstop for their musical with practice. Without practice even a team made up of the greatest of players would fall short. Without practice the school's musical would not of went so well and been perfectly orchestrated. Practice is an important hardship because in the end we are able to see all the rewards of our hard work and sacrifice. This past week I was able to join in this lesson by going on the Mount Leconte hike. A five mile hike straight up hill of course requires a bit of hardship, but by the end you are able to reap the rewards of the beauty of creation. All of us here can make a list of our own hardships, but are we able to see the good that can spring forth from them.
The apostles came to this same realization in the Book of Acts when they realized that being able to endure hardship was important for the propagation of faith. Without this hardship that we may take for granted we would be lucky to have this Church to worship in today. Instead of rolling the dice and hoping that they would enter the Kingdom of Heaven by doing the bare minimum they entered into faith strengthening practices such as fasting and prayer. The realization came for them that the path they would have to endure to bring evangelization to all nations was a very tough one. They had already seen many die for the faith and they knew that they also risked the reality of martyrdom through their ministry. We all have it so much easier then what they had to endure because we in the United States do not need to fear martyrdom. Despite this reality each of us are constantly being given the same necessary challenge to endure hardship for the Kingdom of God.
As we found ourselves in preparation for the season of Easter we spent time reflecting upon the importance of sacrifice and prayer during the season of Lent. Now that we have passed through these forty penitential days many of us have grown comfortable and have forgotten about the ever necessary reality of feeling tension within our life of faith. To offer sacrifices within our own lives is to mortify our flesh in the name of the Gospel of Christ. Through feeling the hardship that is brought into our lives through mortification we can begin to be liberated in our lives instead of allowing ourselves to remain stagnate in our life of faith. If we study the lives of the Desert Fathers or many of the saints we will realize that the hardship of mortification was preferred over the laziness of comfortability. To do something as simple as to go without salt at supper could be enough to begin to open the doors to faith within our lives. If we walk out of this Church comfortable we will remain Christians by words only and not also by our deeds.
In Saint John's Gospel we are being given a new commandment where we are being called upon as Christians to enter into love for our neighbors. This commandment calls us to not only have the right words, but also the actions that go along with those words. With all of our daily dealings with others we realize how hard that this can truly be. It is so easy to get caught up in ourselves and our own needs and forget the humanity that is found within our neighbor. Anytime where we forget to love as we have been commanded we are entering into sin because we have become selfish with our needs and have failed to see the needs of the whole. In society we can see the slow erosion that has taken place in popular culture where we have been taught contrary to this commandment of love. Within our own lives we know how easy it can be to judge another or to enter into gossip concerning them. By this commandment that has been bestowed upon us we are not to remain comfortable, but instead challenge ourselves and society to truly begin to love.
To ever grow in the possibility of living out this commandment we must be willing to enter into hardship. Without a little bit of hardship we will always remain the same because we will remain caught up in gossip, the judgment of others, or our other failures to love. We will be stuck with the many immoral norms that have snuck into society without being able to see the humanity that lies behind all people. We cannot just say that we will magically begin to love without first preparing our lives each day to grow inside of this commandment. In order to begin to grow in this manner we should model our lives after the apostles who were willing to enter into prayer and sacrifice. Prayer is the time when we are able to enter into relationship with God and hopefully through it begin to silence our hearts and minds and enter into a deeper relationship with God. Through this relationship we can begin to see the love that God pours out for us and how from this love we are to do the same to our brothers and sisters. The sacrifice of mortification is also important because through entering into the hardship of sacrifice we are able to join with Christ upon the cross and begin to let go of all our harmful desires which liberate us from our selfishness and allow us to begin to love.
On this day may each us begin to remain with Lord and His love so that we may behold Him who makes all things new. May we be made new by enduring the hardships of sacrifice and entering into the quiet of prayer in order to prepare ourselves for the Kingdom of Heaven and grow in our ability to love.
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