The events of the news this week have been dramatic, to say the least. I was relieved that they weren’t happening in New Bedford, unlike so many other major stories, but that was about it in terms of being relieved.

Praying about that young man in Virginia and about the destruction that he brought to so many lives, while also praying about today’s readings, brought up the importance of love. When I was looking over a newspaper which had his picture on the cover, someone else said, “If only he were loved…”

I know that mental illness played a great part in how Cho’s life turned out, ending his and 32 others’ lives. But the lack of love that he palpably felt brings to mind other people who have gone “over the edge” in the last few years and have been destructive with their own lives and the lives of others. Here, among other examples, I am referring to the 2 bar attacks here in New Bedford.

We just heard Jesus in the Gospel ask Peter 3 times, “Do you love me?” Even Jesus, even God the Son, wanted to hear someone say that they loved Him. Jesus wanted Peter to reaffirm the love that he (Peter) had denied 3 times on Holy Thursday night.

Was it enough for Peter just to say that he loved Jesus? No – each time, Jesus then commands Peter, “Feed my lambs,… Tend my sheep,… Feed my sheep.”

As the old 60’s song “Do you love me” insists, love is “work, work, work.” The work that Jesus gave Peter, and all the popes after him, was to love us, the sheep, by feeding us with the Sacraments and good teaching.

On Tuesday, when the murders occurred at Virginia Tech, everyone asked, “How could this happen.” One person here in the parish then said, “It all goes back to abortion. If you can kill a baby, you can kill anyone.”

But then on Wednesday we had some unexpected good news. The Supreme Court upheld the ban on partial birth abortion. Critics said this was just because of the presence of new members on the court. However, the key vote in this 5 to 4 decision was Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has supported legalized abortion in the past (and hasn’t renounced that support). Nonetheless, it was striking one of the lines he wrote in his decision, “Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression for the bond of love that the mother has for her child.”

For over 30 years our government has said that human life before birth is of no value. This depreciation of human life has led to efforts to eliminate human life outside of the womb, too, such as through euthanasia of the sick or aged.  However, as said before, this depreciation of human life did not begin in our country in 1973. Almost from the beginning the British had African brought to this country (if they did not die on the way) as slaves. Then we had the centuries of conflicts with the Native Americans to take their land away from them for our convenience. Then we have the ways in which we fought our enemies in various wars, especially our killing of entire cities of civilians in Germany and Japan. All of these events have been explained by saying that the good end justified using an evil means. Our minds might accept that rationale, but God does not.

To get us out of this pattern of disrespecting humanity, out of the pattern of having Christ’s blood on our hands (as the people in the first reading complained about), we need to turn back to Love. Not superficial love, which is not really love, but just self-interest, but also not just all-sacrifice, all the time.

Pope Benedict in his Encyclical, God is Love, noted, “Man cannot live by (sacrificial)  love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift. Certainly, as the Lord tells us, one can become a source from which rivers of living water flow (cf. Jn 7:37-38). Yet to become such a source, one must constantly drink anew from the original source, which is Jesus Christ, from whose pierced heart flows the love of God (cf. Jn 19:34).”

To be able to love, we need Christ to fill us up with His love. We receive that love directly from Him in the 7 Sacraments, but we also receive that love from Him when people love us. The young man in Virginia, like the suicide bombers in Iraq, seemed closed to receiving any love. To be open to receiving love means taking a chance, taking the chance of interacting with people who might hurt us, but also might love us. Christ took that chance – He was hurt a lot, but also He was loved a lot, by Mary, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Martha, John, sick people, grieving people, small children…

Each week we come here to enter into Union, Communion with Christ – but that also entails being united in love with everyone else. The Pope wrote, “Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom He gives Himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, His own. Communion draws me out of myself towards Him, and thus also towards unity with all Christians. We become “one body”, completely joined in a single existence. Love of God and love of neighbour are now truly united: God incarnate draws us all to himself.”

That is one of the reasons why Christ wants us to be part of the church, and not just individuals talking directly to God. He wants us to be together in a community of love. True, over the last 2000 years we have committed many sins against love, and yet this is the path God chose. God came not as a pure spirit, but as a man. He wants us to love Him not just in our minds, but in our interactions with other people.

If we can’t love our neighbor, we won’t be able to love God. “Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well. Only if I serve my neighbour can my eyes be opened to what God does for me and how much He loves me” (Deus Caritas Est, 18).  

Maybe if more people were sensitive to the delicate emotional needs of others, especially young people, there would be less tragic events like those of this week in our world. Maybe if more of Christ’s little lambs were tended with love then the vision of all bowing down before Christ the Lamb, as seen in the second reading, would become a reality, instead of bowing down to our own self-interests.