"It was Christ who chose you to go forth."

John 15:9-17

"It was Christ who chose you to go forth."

The vine-branches imagery points to our relationship with Jesus. And one that will bear fruit only in Him. That relationship leads us to charity - one that thinks of the other as oneself. This is the charity that bears good fruit by obedience to God's commandments, listening to His counsel and doing good works from the Holy Spirit's inspirations. "Love one another as I have loved you" is that inspiration that speaks to us in God's Word and the celebration of the Eucharist. As we meditate on what Christ did in His public ministry, we are also to do as we live out the Eucharist in our lives. The Eucharist sends us forth in the name of Christ to bring the spirit of charity in the very secular spheres of life and work.

The concept of love in Christianity is different from how the secular world understands it. In one of his sermons, St. Augustine of Hippo says that since we are brought up in this secular notion of love, we do not usually love others in the way God wills of us. To love the right way, we are called to conquer first the spiritual illnesses (bad habits and vices) within us: pride, despair, and earthly attachments. Spiritual health thus means to refocus and re-center our lives on God and our eternal destiny, so that this purified love may flow also to others. It means that we attend to our our daily concerns in the right way that we may not forget the one thing necessary (cf. Donald Burt's "Augustine's Search for God").

To balance our lives in a fast-paced world filled with the speed of technology is not easy, but with God's help in a context of family, co-workers and friends, we can work at it and succeed.. We only need the courage to begin each day to be faithful, and soon we can pass through from pride to humility, from despair to hope, and from earthly attachments to spiritual concerns. It is possible; prayer and moments of silence helps us be open to the Holy Spirit. Openness to God will help us take stock of where we are and where we are headed: lives lived well for the building of God's kingdom in our midst.