His Last Will and Testament

One of the very confronting things we have to do after becoming an adult is to make a will. We have to decide and then put in legal terms what is important in our lives and what we wish to happen to it when we die. Young people don’t like talking of death, and as I did not have anything of substance to leave anyone, the experience was strange, but I wrote it anyway for the sake of form.

The purpose of a ‘last will and testament’ is to direct material possessions to those whom we wish to receive them, after our death.  Wills often go into great depth, and are a window into how a person wants to be remembered after their death. The shortest extent will is two words (‘to wife’), and the longest will is that of Frederica Cook, who died in London in 1925 leaving a will of 1066 pages![i] It seems that with material goods we even have to be possessive after death! That being so, the attachment we feel for material goods needs to be ordered toward something greater. The American Jesuit John Kavanaugh puts it this way: Our very love for the goods of this earth draws us to the good whose self is love.[ii] If this transition does not happen, then our attachment is disordered and self-centred. In other words, material goods are at the service of the spiritual life, not the other way around.

The material will needs to lead to a spiritual will. This is the will that we see written in the lives of those who go before us into death. Yesterday Granny May Howard died after 108 years living in this world.  She has left an extraordinary spiritual will to the five generations of her family that have come after her. Her will is that of faith, family and perseverance. These wills are always the best and most fruitful, for they truly are a gift for generations to come. So with this will of Granny May, we remember a woman who lived her life in faith, who persevered through the trails of the Stolen Generations without bitterness, and who lived on a spiritual plane for most of her life.

Gospel today gives us Jesus’ last will and testament. St John has written it down for us to make it very clear. It is a gift of love: I give you a new commandment, Love one another as I have loved you. Just as I have loved you, you must love one another.

At first it does not seems to be a free gift, since Jesus is commanding us to a particular action. However, remember that he is bequeathing this at the Last Supper, just prior to offering his life for the salvation of all people. Jesus proves by his life and witness that love for others is the only way that we can live the life that he invites us to. You can’t do half measures on this one:  it is either all or none! Michael Fallon teaches us: Only by obeying this command of Jesus can we live the divine intimacy which he came to share with us. [iii]

After the death and resurrection of Jesus, the church gradually came to an understanding of what being a Christian entailed. It was based on self-giving love, the last will and testament of Jesus Christ. Sometime after 130AD a Roman public servant, writing a government report, recorded of Christians:

They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonoured, and yet in their very dishonour are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honour; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. [iv]

This is what Jesus meant!

This is the faith and practice that Jesus bequeathed to the Church, and that the Church has always held firmly. On the other hand, putting into practice has sometimes been challenging. St Josemaria Escriva, writing last century, notes wryly:

The Master's message and example are clear and precise. He confirmed his teaching with deeds. Yet I have often thought that, after twenty centuries, it is indeed still a new commandment because very few people have taken the trouble to practise it. The others, the majority of men, both in the past and still today, have chosen to ignore it. Their selfishness has led them to the conclusion: 'Why should I complicate my life? I have more than enough to do just looking after myself.' Such an attitude is not good enough for us Christians. If we profess the same faith and are really eager to follow in the clear footprints left by Christ when he walked on this earth, we cannot be content merely with avoiding doing unto others the evil that we would not have them do unto us. That is a lot, but it is still very little when we consider that our love is to be measured in terms of Jesus' own conduct. Besides, he does not give us this standard as a distant target, as a crowning point of a whole lifetime of struggle. It is — it ought to be, I repeat so that you may turn it into specific resolutions — the starting point, for Our Lord presents it as a sign of Christianity: 'By this shall all men know that you are my disciples.'[v]

This is what gives us life in this world and the next. In the end, love is all that matters.  

May we live the challenge of the people of God, like Granny May and so many others have taught us, and may we continue to receive love and life from Christ as the Church has done for the last two thousand years.

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, 27^th April 2013, OLQP Broome.

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[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_and_testament

[ii] John F. Kavanaugh, The Word Engaged: Meditations on the Sunday Scriptures Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York (1997), pp. 64-66. Found at http://liturgy.slu.edu/5EasterC042813/theword_engaged.html, last accessed 27^th April 2013.

[iii] Michael Fallon MSC, The Gospel According to St John: An Introductory Commentary, Chevalier, Kensington, (1998), p.247.

[iv] Mathetes, Letter to Diognetus, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0101.htm .

[v] St Josemaria Escriva, Friends of God, http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/friends_of_god-point-223.htm, 223.