A big smile from heaven!(C) Mary TV/Anthony Zubac 2019
May 6, 2019
Dear Family of Mary!
"Dear children, with a motherly love I am calling you to respond to the great love of my Son, with pure and open hearts, with complete trust. I know the greatness of His love. I carried Him within me, the Host in the heart, the light and the love of the world. My children, also my addressing you is a sign of the love and tenderness of the Heavenly Father-a big smile filled with the love of my Son, a call to eternal life..." (May 2, 2019)
Our Lady wants us to love Jesus back. She wants the love that her Son has for us, that deep and incredibly strong love, to be received and reciprocated! She wants us to love Him back. And I think He wants us to love Him back too. I think, in fact, that Jesus waits for us to love Him. Yes, He became one of us, completely human, so that He could be with us, teach us, suffer for us and die for us. Yes, He rose again, in order to prove to us that He would take us with him to heaven. He showed us that He is God! And He is the God who loves us!
But I believe there is another dimension to Jesus' great love! It is the human dimension. Jesus loves us because we are His own family now. He loves us! And wants us to love Him back with our own little human love. Why? Because He wants us to be in love with Him like He is with us!
Yesterday at Mass, we read from John 21, in which Jesus meets the Apostles at the seaside after the Resurrection. He cooks them breakfast! He invites them to come ashore and be with Him. He then takes Peter aside and asks him three times, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" We realize that Jesus is rectifying the three times that Peter denied Him during His Passion. It seems Jesus is also testing Peter to see if He has recovered from His fall.
But I sense another level in this conversation. I think Jesus missed Peter's love. I think Peter was so full of shame, that he wasn't relating to Jesus with the love he had given Him before the Passion. Jesus missed His old friend and wanted their relationship to be healed. And so, He asked Peter three times to say, out loud, that he loved Him. That could have caused a healing in Peter, the healing of his broken heart. Peter must have realized the Jesus actually needed Him. Jesus loved Peter and wanted their relationship to be healed.
Jesus loved Peter so much at that moment. And this great love is also there for each of us. Jesus wants all of us to love Him as Peter did. He wants us to realize how much He loves each one of us. He loves us so deeply, humanly, and truly, that if we knew it we would cry with joy!!
This love for us, this love for each of us IS the BIG SMILE!!! Like Peter, we need to be healed in our hearts from the shame and brokenness of our sins and realize that Jesus really misses us and needs us to be in a loving relationship with Him. He wants it!! He wants us to be His friends.
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2019
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