Reflection for the Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 17, 2009

Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1 Jn 4:7-10; Jn 15:9-17

I am sitting by the hospital bed of my 80 year old aunt, learning what love is. "Let us love one another" rings in my ears. What does that mean? In my younger years I thought it was about doing things for other people. Showing love. Demonstrating love. Now I experience it as "being with." There is nothing I can do. I wait.

My aunt speaks of wanting to die. She may well be dying. Her condition is very serious. I wait with her. My cousin arrived from New York the day after I took my aunt to the hospital. There is nothing I can do for my cousin except wait with her and be with her.

Love. Jesus speaks of loving one another "as I have loved you." I think about all that Jesus did...and then rethink it again. He spent a good deal of time simply being with people. The power of his healing, I realize, came from being with others. Jesus did not seek out people. He waited peacefully for them to come to him. I am learning this requires a lot of patience. A lot of waiting. A lot of being with. Not an easy thing for us doers.

And what comes of waiting? Of being with? Sometimes death. Perhaps always a death--a death of something I needed to release. Peter tells us that "God does not have favorites". Love one another. I find I cannot always do that. Most often it is because I am holding on, desperately at times, to a judgment I have made about another. And I seem not to be able to let that judgment go. There is no love in that. I realize I hold the worst judgments for myself. My own harshest critic. No forgiveness. No release for myself. Love one another. Surely I must come to love myself or I will never be able to truly receive God's love. The love that is there for the taking. Aahhh. God, too, waits for me. God, too, is with me. Always.

Yes, that is it. I am experiencing the struggle to die. There is nothing I can do to speed up the process of dying to myself. The only thing I am left with is waiting and, worst of all tortures, being with myself. And so I wait as does my aunt.

Where is the love in all this? Of course it is in the experience of presence that waiting and release offer if we are patient -- or desperate -- enough. It is God's gift of being with. That unconditional acceptance we call love, caritas, charity.

My aunt is full of gratitude even while she is in pain. Her resistance has moved into the waiting mode and in this does she experience the presence of her daughter and her niece. An unconditional acceptance. My aunt, my cousin and I experience this together and so God is present. Love is present. We love one another.

Reflection by Mary C. Stuart, SCNY Associate
(Mary, better known as Molly, lives in Colorado where
she serves as a spiritual guide and retreat director.)