We just heard the narrative of the Passion and Death of Jesus. The most holy days of the Church’s liturgical year are approaching this week – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Let’s think about the word “passion” for a minute. It comes from the Latin word that means “to suffer.” Yet we also say that we have a passion for something when we really love it. So suffering and love has some kind of connection.

St. Paul brings this out in today’s second reading from the Letter to the Philippians. He writes that Jesus was in the “form” of God. The Greek word we translate as form means something unchangeable. St. Paul is saying that Jesus is really God. St. Paul also tells us that Jesus “emptied” himself for us. Here St. Paul uses the Greek word which means to pour out until nothing is left. This is what Jesus did out of love for us. He is God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, yet He became a man. He lived the life we live; he experienced the joys we experience; he suffered the sufferings we suffer. And he died.

We all have a great question in our lives. Am I loved? We can run from that question, we can try to answer it in a thousand ways, but it keeps coming back. Is there someone who loves me enough to die for me? 

St Paul assures us that the answer is yes. And that someone is God himself. God holds nothing back in his love for each one of us. In Jesus, he pours himself out for you and for me.

During my first year in the seminary I took a course on the various schools of spirituality in the Church. In that class I first learned about Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur. She was a Frenchwoman who lived from 1866-1914. She was a devout Catholic who was married to an atheist, Felix Leseur. Her husband and his friends would tease and criticize Elisabeth for her faith, and this caused tremendous suffering. 

Elisabeth offered up all of the sufferings that she endured for her husband. This suffering included both the ridicule of her husband and a painful form of cancer. She made up her mind to pour herself out for her husband and to respond to his lack of love with a greater love. She wrote in her diary (which has been published as The Secret Diary of Elisabeth Leseur): “Let us beware: nothing is so delicate and so sacred as the human soul; nothing is so quickly bruised. Let each one of our words and deeds contain a principle of life that, penetrating other spirits, will communicate light and strength and will reveal God to them.”

After she died, Felix discovered her diary and was deeply moved by how much she had suffered for him. He returned to the Catholic faith and became a Dominican priest. In the 1920’s he gave a retreat to a young priest named Fulton Sheen, who was deeply marked by the stories Felix told about Elizabeth. Elizabeth Leseur mirrored God’s love. God holds nothing back in his love for us.

Because Christ loved us first, we can love others with a love that holds nothing back. And charity begins at home! Here are three simple action items we can all try. Each day, thank God for 1 thing you’re grateful for in one of your immediate family members. Write it down. The next point flows from that. Speak positively of that person. It’s simple, but difficult. It’s worth it though. It brings so much peace. And when we’re actively reflecting on the gift that someone else is to us, it’s much easier to find positive words about that person. Finally, each day, find one way to show your love for that person. Maybe it’s just a smile. Maybe it’s a letter or a phone call. But find one thing. 

So 1 thing you’re grateful for about someone in your immediate family, speak well of that person, and show your love. And now we prepare for Christ’s coming. Christ is coming to us in the Eucharist today, in this Mass. His love is made present for us. We receive him with wonder, and we ask him: “Lord, help me to love with a love that holds nothing back.”