"I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another." (Jn 13:34)
It seems hard to believe that it's been 2 weeks since my last post. People have pointed that out to me recently, so I have taken the hint that it's time to get back to it. April proved to be quite a busy month for me. Most of my time over the last 2 months has been consumed by work stemming from a doctoral seminar, and all the reading/research/writing which it involves. And this past week my time was spent confined to bed after wrenching the muscles in my lower back. Okay, enough excuses...on to the important stuff!Every time I hear the above quote proclaimed during Mass, or come across it in my own reading, I come to a deeper appreciation of its significance. The above verse comes from the Gospel of John (13:34) which we hear in today's Gospel reading, but this new commandment is repeated again in John 15:12, which is the version I am most accustomed to hearing and using: "This is my commandment: love one another as I love you." I become more and more convinced as I reflect on this phrase that whole of the Gospel message of Christ is encompassed within it. It is like the mustard seed which Jesus speaks about in the Gospel.
We know that Jesus summarized the 10 Commandments from the Old Testament when a Pharisee approached Him and asked what commandment in the law was the greatest: "He said to him, 'You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.'" (Mt 22:37-40) Nowadays people shorten this quote even further and summarize the 10 Commandments by talking about "the love of God and the love of neighbor." This is helpful when you want to be concise, but one must not forget how we are to love: with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and as we love ourselves. This is one of the principal reasons I think Jesus' "new commandment" is so rich - by looking to Jesus we can see how we are to love God and others: "love one another as I have loved you."
In a way this is a new commandment, but in another way it summarizes the two greatest commandments. And this is the second reason I am so drawn to this last commandment of Christ. If we are to truly understand how we are to love others as God desires us to, we must move beyond looking to Jesus only as a concept or a role model. We must open ourselves to recognize that He is truly with us, and ask Him to love us, to open us to receive His love; to permit Him to love us; to seek out His love with all our heart, and soul, and mind! If we are to love as God wants us to, we must first experience and be transformed by His love, for we must love one another with the love of God - the love that comes from God; the love that we must first receive from God; the love that gives meaning, hope, light, and life to our life - "love one another as I have loved you." This is why St. John the Evangelist can say later on in his life that "whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love," (1 Jn 4:8) and also, "in this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us...." (1 Jn 4:10)
The "movement" in discipleship of Jesus does not begin within us and move outward to others. Discipleship truly begins when we open ourselves to receive the love of God first. The love to which we are called as Christians begins and abides in God, and it moves out from Him to us when we spend time with Him, when we dialogue with Him in prayer, when we draw close to Him either through baptism, or confession, or the Eucharist, and when we ask Him to reveal His love to us. By experiencing and receiving His love we are transformed into the image of Christ, we become Christian - this is a continual process; it is the beginning of discipleship. From the richness of God's love that we have received we are then able to begin loving others with the love of God - "love one another as I have loved you." This saves us from that mentality which reduces Christianity to a set of rules and regulations that must be obeyed, and that we must rely on our own power to live by those rules - in other words, a "Christianity" which begins and ends not with Christ, but with the "ego". For one who views Christianity in that light it is most perplexing and vexing to the mind to bear such a self-contrived burden and at the same time experience the fragility and inconsistency of our own existence (having pulled a muscle in my lower back human fragility is fresh on my mind!).
To be honest, I could keep writing for hours on this new commandment of Christ, but I think it might be best to conclude with one last point, and that touches upon the context in which Jesus gave His disciples this last commandment: the eve of His passion and death. Jesus suffered. The love of God requires sacrifice - it requires us to die to anything within us that is not from God, or anything that will not be found in the Kingdom of God (pride, anger, greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, envy, etc.). Being a disciple of Christ requires a lot of work on our part, as we hear in today's first reading, "it is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the Kingdom of God." (Acts 14:22) But underneath this work is the invisible power of God that comes to us when we are open to His love. He strengthens us in this work of interior purification, and helps us break free from the many forms of selfish love present in our life. At first it feels like we are dying - and we are! - but new life breaks through during this process, and we begin experiencing the resurrection of Christ in our own life - a new life which has its hardships, but they are now sustained, lightened, and transformed by the love, peace, and joy of Christ. And here I end...for now. God bless you and may you have a blessed week.
(Photo of "Christ and St. John at the Eucharist" courtesy of Br. Lawrence Lew, O.P.)
UPDATE: If you would like to read Pope Benedict's homily for this Sunday you can read it here on Zenit. It is always encouraging as a priest when you find out later that your reflections on the Word of God were similar to the Holy Father's. :-)
0 comments:
Post a Comment