How do you get eggs from turkeys?

Jesus said to his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

Does this mean that if we do not keep Jesus’ commandments, then we do not really love Jesus? But I know many people who, I am certain, have a deep love for our Lord yet fail and fall many times. I have met many of them inside the confessional. The fact that they kneel there and humbly confess their sins to a complete stranger is proof of their great love despite their failure to keep Jesus’ commandments.

We must be wary of false dichotomies. The world is made up not only of people who love God and follow his laws, and those who do not love God and disobey his will. There are also those who sincerely love Jesus but are overwhelmed by temptation and sin.

Those of us who find ourselves in the last category are in very good company. Pope Francis was once asked, “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” His answer: “I am a sinner. This the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”

“I am a sinner.” Not was. And surely, Pope Francis must love Jesus. “I am a sinner.” Maybe this is why the Pope loves Jesus so much.

We cannot end with just an admission of our sinfulness or a profession of our love. If we truly love Jesus, we must try to be more faithful to his commandments. How can we keep his commandments –undisciplined and divided inside as we are? How can we love Jesus more?

An African Jesuit I live with in community shared with me how they get wild turkeys to lay eggs for them back home. It seems that all one has to do is make nests for them in any clearing, and once the wild turkeys see these nests, they will just lay their eggs. One hundred percent of the time, though sometimes sooner, sometimes later, the nests will be deposited with eggs. But one has to build the nests first.

How can we more faithfully keep the Lord’s commandments? How can we love Jesus more? I think that the first question to ask is neither of these. Scripture says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us” (1 John 4:10); “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). The first questions to ask are: “How do we experience God’s love more? How do we let God love us more?”

One answer: Build nests. We have to make a clearing in our lives, uproot those thorny bushes that have been choking us up, and make nests. For certain, 100 percent of the time, though sometimes sooner, sometimes later  — we just have to be patient — the Spirit will always lay his love and his grace in those nests.

What does it mean to make nests in our lives for God? We have to put ourselves in situations where we can feel God’s love. These opportunities are not limited to retreats, prayer sessions, and the Sacraments. We have to put ourselves in situations where we step outside of ourselves, push the boundaries of what has grown comfortable, and try to reach out to others more. Go out to the margins and to the fringes, Pope Francis would say.

Perhaps, we can drop our usual complaints – complaining never really solves anything – and seek out a new way to address our old irritations and problems. Perhaps, we can enlarge the circle of people we have close relations with to include those with whom we have little in common, those with whom we do not see eye to eye, and those who have hurt us in the past. Perhaps, we can finally entertain those thoughts and stirrings that urge us to try something new, to venture out with a new mission though it will make our lives harder, to risk a new way of living out our faith.

What can building nests for God mean in your life?

My African friend has more to say about wild turkeys, nests, and eggs: You must keep on building new nests; you cannot rely on the old ones you have made. And once you see some eggs in a particular nest, you have to take two or three and just leave one or two in the nest. When the wild turkey visits that nest again and finds that there are less eggs, it will lay two or three eggs again. But if the wild turkey finds that no eggs have been taken, it will not lay any more.

It is almost like magic. Or better yet, this is like Providence. The graces God gives us will multiply if we use them. But if we just store them, like the talents the steward who played it safe buried, they will be no better than stones put in a hole in the ground.

Easter is a time for finding eggs – not just the colorful ones with candies inside but the ones that symbolize situations where we can nurture new life, the promise of new relationships, and the possibility of new hope. On this sixth Sunday of Easter, maybe we can ask ourselves: “How many new eggs have we found recently?” If we have not found many, maybe it is because we have not built new nests or used the old eggs we have been given. These are the first steps in loving God and keeping his commandments.