May 10, 2026 (Sixth Sunday of Easter) - Fr. Steve Moore

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The grace and peace of God our Father, the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

How many here really know their ancestry? For instance, raise your hand if you can name all eight of your great-grandparents. One. Two. All right. That’s about right. Okay. Three. Okay. Especially if you’re in O4. Okay. Five. Okay. You’re all so timid this morning. I’m not going to make you do anything. I was just, you know, kind of showing that it’s not common. But people do have that sense.

And I was reminded of this a few years ago. I was at a training at the Center, which used to be the Jesuit mission in Sault Ste. Marie. They switched over so that it’s now a training center and museum to learn about the Onondaga and Haudenosaunee people.

There, I was introduced to the idea of seven generations. You may already know this, but among the Haudenosaunee, the idea is that you think back to seven generations before and seven generations into the future — how your actions will impact those generations.

And so I just want to briefly take you through a kind of meditation. We’re not going to go seven in each direction, but imagine you’re in the middle. You can close your eyes if you wish, or just relax and not focus on anything.

Imagine, to your left — and since it’s Mother’s Day weekend, you can go down the mother’s line if you wish, or if that’s a problem for you, you can choose any line you want — but to your left: your parents, your grandparents, and your great-grandparents.

Can you see them? Do you remember what they were like, or all that you heard about them? Their lives. The way they lived. Where they came from. The things that were important to them. Their pain. Their struggle. The things they wanted to hand on to you, their children and descendants.

Now I invite you to shift your attention to those on the right. They are our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren. And if you don’t have any particular children of your own, we all belong to families and we are all connected to the next generation.

So in whatever way that makes sense for you, imagine those generations: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Can you imagine what may be their hopes and their fears? Their struggles and their joys? Can you imagine the future that far away?

I take you through that brief exercise because I think it helps to center us in today’s liturgy.

This first reading from the Acts of the Apostles is one of my very favorites in all of scripture. Paul is characteristically noted at times for being a hard-nosed character, and yet there he is in Athens, in the Areopagus. Rather than bang them over the head with what they don’t believe, he notices. He looks around and sees an altar to an unknown god, and he tells them:

“The God that you worship, that you do not know, I am here to tell you about. It is this God in whom we live and move and have our being.”

As some of your own poets have said.

That grips me.

“In him we live and move and have our being.”

And if the language is difficult, hear it: we live and move and have our being. How often do we think of ourselves as totally caught up in God? This God who is the ultimate connection that each and every one of us share.

And it would be false to think that this is simply an individualistic connection. This God in whom we live and move and have our being is the same God that connects us to the generations that have come before and the generations that will come after.

It is the same God who connects us with one another — those who are like us, those who are in this church today, and those who are so far away that we do not know their names or their stories and are characteristically so different from us that we have difficulty understanding them.

And yet, between all of us, there is this profound connection. And we are called to live into that connection.

That’s what Jesus is talking about in the gospel today: to live on in my love. And you don’t have to do it alone. In fact, I’m sending someone to you — the Paraclete, the Advocate, the one who walks with you to help guide you and sustain you on this journey of connection.

And I believe that this is the most radical part of the gospel and of our belief system.

Now, Christians are a wide variety just in and of ourselves. But have you noticed what we tend to focus on? I’m talking big-C Christians, at least in this country.

In other parts of the country, they’re fighting for the Ten Commandments in our schools. Now, I am not against the Ten Commandments. I just wonder: why these ten?

As you may know, in the Hebrew Scriptures it’s six hundred and thirteen commandments, not just ten. The Decalogue stands out as maybe special in some ways, but observant Jews observe them all.

And I had the privilege of being at a training last week where I was at table with Orthodox Jews, and we had Hasidic Jews also in the room. And I could see them following all the commandments that we Christians ignore.

You’re all breaking them right now, by the way. If you’re wearing clothes made of two different cloths, you’re in violation of a commandment. And if you go down to coffee hour, we don’t keep kosher, so you’re breaking a commandment there.

And I could go on and on and on about all the commandments you and I are breaking.

But Christians focus on the ten as if that’s the mark of what Jesus really came to share with us.

But in today’s gospel, he reminds us the commandment is not simply to follow the ten. It’s to love.

Now that is a much harder commandment.

I think you and I could probably tick off the Ten Commandments or others and think, “Oh, we’re doing pretty well.” It’s not a bad thing to do.

But the more important thing for us to do is to ask ourselves continually, again and again, how loving we are and how we nurture and cultivate that love in our world.

Now the problem with love is that people think sentimentality.

Even on Mother’s Day now — we were good. Aaron’s not here because she’s preaching at Saint Lucy’s, but we were good. We got Mama cookies that said “Mom” on them, and we got a balloon that said “Happy Mother’s Day” and a little flower. And the kids made all sorts of little cards.

So we were observant. And that’s important.

And I imagine in some of your families similar things have happened. I see some visitors here who are here for Mother’s Day, which is wonderful.

And there are different ways in which we try to express or show our care. There’s nothing wrong with any of that.

But if we think that that is love, then that’s where we fall short.

One of my favorite quotes from the Russian author Dostoevsky is:

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

Let me repeat that.

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

How Russian, right? Of course I’m Irish, so I can’t throw stones.

But love is really hard. It’s difficult to love. It’s difficult to see beyond the surface. It’s difficult to see the other — the person we would like to vilify, the person on the other side of the aisle — and love them.

But Jesus said, “Love your enemies. Pray for your persecutors.”

This goes throughout the entire gospel. And this is the last farewell discourse. This is what he leaves for each and every one of us.

And so many Christians are caught up in doing this thing or that thing that they forget that the essence of what it means to live in this world and to follow the teachings of Jesus is to be a loving person toward others and toward ourselves and toward all of God’s creation.

That’s it.

You don’t need to memorize all six hundred and thirteen commandments of the Old Testament unless you want to. It can’t hurt. But you don’t have to do that.

There’s so much that we put on ourselves that we don’t have to do.

But the one thing that we must do is seek to become more loving, more in touch with this God in whom we live and move and have our being.

And if we do that, then the world will naturally right itself.

We always must be working on ourselves first and radiating that out to others, recognizing that God is at work, has been at work long before we even noticed, and will be doing so long after we are committed to the seven generations and beyond.

Today we celebrate mothers, but we also celebrate that connection which motherhood signifies. We celebrate the fact that we have been loved into being, and it’s through this recognition that we can and do share God’s love with others.

I’d like to leave you with a prayer written by John Morris, a Jesuit who wrote this on the eve of his ordination to the priesthood.

Priesthood ordination, diaconate ordination, graduation — these are all special times, like others, when often we take stock and look at how we’ve lived our lives and how we wish to live our lives into the future.

He wrote:

“Mighty God, Father of all, compassionate God, Mother of all, bless every person I have met, every face I have seen, every voice I have heard. Bless every city, town, and street that I have known. Bless every sight I have seen, every sound I have heard, every object I have touched. In some mysterious way, these have all fashioned my life. All that I am, I have received. Great God, bless the world.”