WORD 2day: Saturday, 4th week in Easter time
May 17, 2025: Acts 13: 44-52; John 14: 7-14
These days we are listening to the Word from St. John. For St. John, Eternal Life is the concrete difference that Christ makes in our lives. John uses the term "eternal life" 18 times in his Gospel - that's the kind of importance that the community learnt from Christ himself.
How do we understand this eternal life... is it a life that is at the end of this life? That's how our human mind calculates. But eternal life is life that is timeless. That is a gift that God has already placed within us. We need to grow more and more aware of it - the Risen Lord is a reminder of that need.
There are traces of the "eternal within us" and there are steps to become aware of it:
The first step towards it is, Recognising the gift that our life is, without forgetting the role of the Giver! We need to recognise that life is a gift and a gift from our Creator who has loved us into existence.
The second step is to live life the way the Lord wants me. Just a few days earlier the Word instucted us, that the Father's commandments, the Father plan for us, is eternal life. This consists of living my life to the full, living it to the fullness of what is expected of me.
The third step is to be ready to give that life up for the sake of the One who gave that life to me. That is the highest union with Life itself: the fullness of eternal life where we realise the Life within us, the Lord within us and say like Jesus, the Father and I are one!
If we realise it, we shall behold the Eternal life, so lovingly gifted to us - failing which, we are the sole losers!