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Fourth Sunday of Easter

Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 25, 2011
Marlene Milasus, OSB, Benedictine Sisters of Elizabeth, NJ

Have you ever been in the presence of someone who makes you feel that you’ve come home? 

If our global community, slowly emerging from the depths of the pandemic, has learned anything, it’s that we are simply not meant to be in isolation. Human beings are meant to connect, are built to connect: with one another, with the earth that’s been given to us as our home, with God. 

In fact, it’s God who gives us this pattern of connectedness; as Christians we believe in a God who lives in intimate connection as Trinity, as a Center of both radical stillness and vibrant loving action. And that Reality lives within each of us. So, when spiritual writers talk about a “God-shaped hole” within, it’s precisely that longing for connection, for intimacy, for the spacious and gracious love that pulsates continually from God. Jesus has incarnated this love and taken it to its utmost length through the Mystery of his death and rising.

And now the same call is ours. Baptized into the life of our Triune God, summoned to discipleship by Jesus, gifted with our unique talents and abilities, we are tasked each day with the same lovely mission of spaciousness and graciousness: to love others radically, to let them feel our unconditional acceptance and concern, to be the kind of Godlike presence that says to others, without first asking questions: Relax; you are home.

It’s the welcome that God gives to each of us unconditionally, and the welcome that we’re now asked to extend unconditionally…no exceptions.

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Sister Marlene Milasus is a member of Benedictine Sisters of Elizabeth, NJ, St Walburga Monastery. Currently, she is serving as community treasurer and liturgist. She works in a monastery retreat program and is a licensed New Jersey boiler operator!

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