Easter Reflections: May 6, 2018 Sixth Sunday of Easter

by Sr. Thuy Doan, SSMO
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

Last August, when I was on my vacation to visit my mom in Houston, I was touched by a sacrificial love of a Texas mother during the Hurricane Harvey Flood. On August 29, 2017 Colette Sulcer, a 41-year-old Texas woman, was driving in her car with her 3-year-old daughter when, suddenly, she hit high water. After she pulled into a parking lot and got out of the car, the flooding’s current carried both Sulcer and her child about a half mile. Somewhere along that distance, while keeping her daughter perched above the water, Sulcer drowned. Officer Carol Riley, a spokesperson for the Beaumont Police Department, told people, “When the baby was found, she was clinging to her mother. She did the best she could to keep her child above the water. The woman absolutely saved the child’s life.”
Sacrificial love is the highest form of love. It is selfless. Its priority is the welfare of others before oneself. Most of us experience the sacrificial love of our parents. They give up their lives, their time, and finances to their children without thinking of themselves. Sacrificial love isn’t about doing what we do well but giving more than we have to give, doing more than we know how to do, sharing more than we thought we could. Sacrificial love means investing our time, money, talents, gifts and service in our love for others. Sacrificial love means willing to empty ourselves, to give ourselves for the sake of others.
Another term for sacrificial love would be agape love. Agape love basically means to be self-sacrificing. God’s love for the whole world is a sacrificial love, a giving love, unconditional love so that we could have life. This love is shown in John 15:13, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” The greatest act of sacrificial love was when Jesus willingly sacrificed His life to free us from our bondage to sin. We must never forget that love comes from God and that God is love. Once we begin to grasp the depth of God’s love for us, then we will be able to love others in sacrificing our lives for them.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe who died for one of the prisoners in Auschwitz said, “Let us remember that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. Without sacrifice, there is no love.”
Let us remember the words of John the Apostle, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity for them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:16-18)