6th Sunday of Easter

In this month of May, in which the Church celebrates Easter time, Ascension and Pentecost and the month dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, it is a good time to reflect of God’s call to each one of us to bear fruits of holiness in our lives. Recently Pope Francis has reminded us of our call to holiness in a practical and modern way:

The Lord asks everything of us, and in return he offers us true life, the happiness for which we were created. He wants us to be saints and not to settle for a bland and mediocre existence.…My modest goal is to repropose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time, with all its risks, challenges and opportunities.  (Gaudete et exsultate 1-2)

And Pope Benedict XVI began his first encyclical with these words:

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith: the Christian image     of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny. In the same verse, Saint John also offers a kind of summary of the Christian life: “We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us”. We have come to believe in God’s love: in these words the Christian can express the fundamental decision of his life. Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. (Deus Caritas Est, 1)

Let us be reminded of our own call to holiness in the joyful living of the gospel in each of our lives.