Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
This past weekend we had the Ignatian Retreat series of meditations to help us in the spiritual life and the last day on Sunday we have the Contemplation to Gain Love, that is a series of meditations or points to meditate upon to help us gain love and the first thing that St. Ignatius points out that we should meditate on is that love ought to be put more in deeds than in words.
So contemplating that, meditating on that, that should help us to gain love, to grow in love, that it is to be put more in deeds than in words and we hear that message coming across in today's gospel when our Lord asks Simon Peter three times, do you love me?
And Simon Peter responds, yes Lord, you know that I love you.
And what does Jesus say, feed my lambs, tend my sheep.
In other words, don't just say that you love me, show that you love me by fulfilling your duties as chief pastor of the flock, right, feed my lambs, tend my sheep.
And so with our own lives we want to examine, you know, we call ourselves Christians, we profess to love God, do we demonstrate that?
Do we show that in our deeds?
And of course, the first thing that we want to be doing is keeping the commandments, right, Jesus says in John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Okay, so that's not just saying that we love Jesus, that's showing him in a very practical way by keeping his commandments.
If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
But not only the commandments, right, we want to also fulfill the duties of our state in life, and in fact that's what our Lord is saying to Peter, right, part of your duty is going to be feeding the lambs and tending the sheep, leading them to the eternal pastors.
So that's the duties of our state in life, you know, if you're a mother, a father, husband and wife, there are certain duties that come along with that, and we want to fulfill those because they are the will of God, and that's how we show that we love the Father.
And then, beyond the commandments and the duties, there's also the charitable works to be done, right, the seven spiritual and the seven corporal works of mercy, everybody according to their possibilities, again, St. John, he writes in his first letter, he who loves God should love his brother also, right, loving our neighbor by performing those works of mercy.
So this is it, right, we want our love for God to become practical, okay, and to be shown and demonstrated by the things that we do.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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Ave Maria.