Sunday Homily, 18 May 2025 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

How old were Adam and Eve at their creation?  Any illustrated bible will show two adults, each figure a picture of perfect humanity all-grown.  But what if our first parents started out as children, mere infants?  How would we look on their story, on the fruit and their fall?  How would we look on ourselves as we are reflected in them?

At least one early Christian writer, St Irenaeus, supposed Adam and Eve were created as infants: squawking walkers, walking squawkers.  What would that say about their decision-making and ours?  They had one commandment at that stage in life.  God kept things simple for them in their innocence: You may eat of any tree except that one.  And then came the tragedy of how that exceptional freedom was too much, when they and we reached for their ruin.

Here on the eve of the Lord’s passion, there too is one commandment given to mere children.  This is the only time in the Gospels the Lord calls the disciples children: “My little children, I shall not be with you much longer.”  The term is evocative, because the one on whom the disciples depend is departing.  Certainly, they behave like little children on Good Friday: they all flee at the first sign of trouble, except for the one who clings to his new mother.  The term children here also recognises their innocence relative to Judas, who is behaving very much like an adult.  The Eleven aren’t guilty of the Lord’s death as Judas is.  He is all too grown up; too wise for his own good.  You don’t have do anything to grow old: just wait it out.  But to mature, you have to love.

There is something in this for how we relate to Christ.  We know he calls the disciples friends, which is a very great thing: the Son of God calls us his friends.  He also refers to the disciples as brothers: the risen Lord tells Mary Magdalene, tell “my brothers that they are to leave for Galilee; they will see me there.”  We come to Christ as a brother and friend, but also as children.  We come to him too as a guardian and shepherd.  And so, we look to him for our livelihood, for a way to live.  We are starting anew with Christ in his love.

We, little children, are given just one commandment on which all else will rest: we are to love each other as he loves us.  The disciples knew very well how the Lord loved them.  All through their years together, they knew him to be lovingly forgiving and patient, lovingly helpful and consoling, lovingly empowering, enlivening, and encouraging.  When did any of the disciples encounter Jesus without becoming more than what they were before?  When did those little children of his fall back in fear over Christ, their spiritual father?  Never.  Not once.  That’s how it is to be with us.

Whenever we meet up together, you and I, we’re to leave each other’s company the better for it.  We’re to make the other more than what they were when we first met up with them, by loving them.  But it’s not just any kind of love which belongs to our brother or sister.  We’re not going to make them better people by a love which we simply summon up from within.

We love each other with Christ’s own love for us.  That could prove difficult depending on who is in front of us.  There are threatening and thorny people around.  So, it’s important we ask Christ to give us his love, his Heart, for us to love them with: “Lord, give me your love to love this person; give me your Heart for them.”  What hurts and pains us, what frightens and worries us can produce all kinds of reactions in us.  But pushing those aside, we progress in the courage of Christ’s love towards full maturity as persons.  Loving even difficult people with Christ’s love is what it means to be grown up – that can be done well even by children.

Loving one another as Christ loved us is how the resurrection will appear in our daily lives.  Some day, perhaps soon or not, God will raise our mortal bodies and join them afresh to our immortal souls.  But we don’t have to wait that long.  Our personal Easter comes when we have loved each other as Christ loves us, when we leave each other’s company the better for having been in it.

May God renew his love within us to make us mature yet innocent, wise yet pure, until we reach perfect humanity in the resurrection of him who lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP

Parish Priest