Sixth Sunday of Easter_B - First Round Draft Choice_050921

I chose you and appointed you

to go and bear much fruit,

Jn 15:16

Deacon Tom Writes,

First Round Draft Pick

Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

Being chosen for a special assignment can do wonders for our self image. In today’s gospel we hear Christ tell us that “...I chose you and appointed you to go and bear much fruit…”. God’s way of doing things is a little different than the way things work in this world. Take Major League football or baseball draft choices. All the teams are vying for the best players to augment their teams. They need to have backup players who can step in and fill the position when a player gets injured or is having a bad game. That’s good strategy and essential for major league sports. It’s just not the way that God does things.

You see, in God’s plan every person has a role to play, specific work that is unique to us, something that only that person can do. If we don’t do it, if we are not up to the task, that work doesn’t get done. God doesn’t have a backup player ready to take our place to carry out the life-long work he has assigned specifically to us. When we are out of the game, so to speak, that good work we were given to do, doesn’t get done. That act of kindness that would have flowed through us to another, doesn’t get done. That righting of a social or moral wrong doesn’t get done. The same goes for that injustice that doesn’t get made just.

One important point to this thought is that our failure to act as God’s chosen ones does not in any way thwart God’s plan. His will will be done in his mysterious way. But we would have sat on the sidelines ignoring the field of play where the game of life is won or lost.

Understanding that we all have a role to play in bringing about God’s plan helps us to realize just how much God loves us and lets us see that he is there every step of the way to help us succeed. We are in every sense of the word God’s, “friends” because he shares his plans with us and gives us the resources we need to accomplish the mission he calls us to do. The secret for our success is “to remain in my love” he reminds us.

The Feast of Easter which lasts from Easter Sunday to Pentecost, a period of fifty days or seven weeks, is a time to renew our hearts and minds and fine tune our lives so that we can experience that “complete joy” that only God can give to us. The joy that comes from God is a joy that is also unique to us and to our circumstances, tailor made for us, just as the mission that comes from God is strictly ours. May these last couple of weeks of Easter help us to know what God is asking of us and may we experience the joy that comes with doing all that we can on our part to becoming his “First round draft pick”.

A very happy Mothers’ Day to all the mom, grandmas, and those “grands” who have been blessed with many years!

Easter Alleluia!!

Deacon Tom