6th Sunday of Easter, Year C

The Gospel for today is a continuation of Jesus's farewell discourse to his disciples at the Last Supper" My Father and I will come to him, and we will make our home with him.

The Trinity, Andrei Rublev, ca. 1411 or 1425-27

It seems to me, commented St. Bernard, that when the psalmist said to God: You make your dwelling in the holy place, you who are Israel’s praise, he had no other heaven in mind than the hearts of the saints.  The apostle expresses it quite clearly: Christ lives in our hearts through faith, he tells us.

It is necessary for a soul to grow and be enlarged until it is capable of containing God within itself. But the dimensions of a soul are in proportion to its love, as the apostle confirms when he urges the Corinthians to widen their hearts in love. Although the soul, being spiritual, cannot be measured physically, grace confers on it what nature does not bestow. It expands spiritually as it makes progress toward human perfection, which is measured by nothing less than the full stature of Christ, and so it grows into a temple sacred to the Lord.

Love, then, is the measure of the soul. Souls are large that love much, small that love little; while as for the soul that has no love at all, such a soul is itself nothing. Without love, says Saint Paul, I am nothing.