Acts 7:55-60/ Apocalypse 22:12-14, 16-17, 20/ John 17:20-26
One of the objects in the sky (actually it’s in outer space) that catches our imagination and fantasy is the moon.
Before man landed on the moon (1969), and even after that, the moon remains mysterious and also romantic to us.
There are songs about the moon – “Blue Moon”, “Fly Me to the Moon”, etc.
Having said that about the moon, we would have seen the photographs of Earth taken from the moon or from outer space.
To say the least, Earth is beautiful, and from the photos, it looks like a big round blue marble with shades of white.
Yes, Earth is beautiful, as seen from outer space.
But is it like one of those things that are like nice from far, but far from nice?
For us who live on Earth, do we think that it is that beautiful and nice?
There is no denying that we want our world to be beautiful and nice.
So we would set about cleaning up our world in the ecological sense. Yes we must care for our world.
That would make our world beautiful and nice.
Yet, instead of beautifying and cleaning up our world in the ecological sense, some have tried to make it their own world in their own sense.
They do this by pushing people that they don’t like out of their way.
Better still, if they can push those people out of this world.
And if pushing does not do the job, then it will be the ultimate – and that is killing.
And this is how the beauty of our world turns ugly and bloody.
That is what we heard about in the 1st reading.
The deacon Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, saw the beauty and the glory of God.
But that made the crowd angry; so angry that they turned ugly and pushed Stephen out of the city and then they killed him by stoning him to death.
Stephen’s death was ugly and bloody. Yet even in death, there was the beauty and the glory of God.
Because Stephen prayed for the forgiveness of his executioners – “Lord do not hold this sin against them.”
The beauty of forgiveness, no matter what, cannot be pushed out of this world by the ugliness of hatred.
Stephen saw the beauty and the glory of God and was able to radiate the beauty and the glory of God by forgiving his executioners.
In the gospel, Jesus also prayed that we will be able to see the beauty of love in unity.
Jesus prayed that we may all be one, just as He and the Father are one.
And how can we not see that we are one? We all live in the one world, the only one Earth.
No matter what, we can’t push others out of this Earth.
In an affectionate sense, we call Earth our Mother Earth.
Indeed, Earth is like a mother who gathers her children as one and united in love.
Today we celebrate Mothers’ Day. Mothers are also like the Earth.
They hold all of us together and they want us to live in peace so that this world, this Earth, will be beautiful and loving.
And no matter how far apart we may be, we still live in the one Earth, and no distance is too great to show love.
There is a story of a man who stopped by a flower shop to order some flowers to be sent to his mother who lived 200 miles away.
As he got out of the car, he noticed a young girl sitting by the curb and sobbing away.
He asked her what was wrong and she replied, “I wanted to buy a rose for my mother. But I only have 75 cents. And a rose cost $2.”
The man smiled and said, “Come on in with me. I will buy you a rose.”
He bought the little girl her rose and he ordered the flowers for his mother.
As they left the shop, he offered the girl a ride home.
She said, “Yes, please. You can take me to my mother.”
She directed him to a cemetery, where she placed the rose on a freshly dug grave.
After that, the man immediately returned to the flower shop, cancelled the order, bought a bouquet of roses, and drove the 200 miles to deliver the flowers personally to his mother.
Just a story to remind us that love knows no distance and that no matter how far apart we are, we are all living in the same Earth.
Not only must we not push people out of this world, we must also remember that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son into the world to show His love for us.
Yes, God loves us and He also loves our world, our Earth.
If God came into this world to love us, then all the more we need to love one another and live in peace and make this a beautiful world for everyone.
We don’t have to go to the moon or to outer space to realize that.