What is the quality of the love Jesus requires of us?
Love one another... [as] I
have loved you, he says in our Gospel from John this week. A daunting task! Jesus loved us to his death, facing the ultimate pain and
suffering, loving humanity with intensity, revealing a love we have yet to
understand, a love without limits, a love that conquers death, a love that
heals and transforms and makes all things
new. Indeed, the love he proposes is
itself new: it is the new power, the only power, that can
bring all humankind together.
The Old Testament certainly was not bereft of a sense of
God’s love for the world, though it was expressed a little differently, in covenant language. We see this in
Psalm 145, which speaks of love that God extends to all the children of Adam, as
he is compassionate toward all his works,
showering them with goodness and graciousness and mercy. But the coming of
Jesus will transform even that notion of love…
In our reading from Acts, it is the love of Jesus
that makes Paul and Barnabas travel countless miles and undergo many hardships, meeting resistance everywhere, to proclaim the faith and establish
churches. In fact, their very
mission is to encourage love, to urge others to let love guide their very
lives. They do this by loving other, and
by sharing the message of love with all they meet.
And the very newness of this love proclaimed by the
disciples is what calls us also to
change, to transformation, to love. Jesus’
suffering leading to his death was the process by which all things were made new. Just as Jerusalem is transformed in the Book of Revelation, becoming a new Jerusalem,
so does the love of God make us new, transforming us through a new level of
intimacy: God’s dwelling is with the human race. We are thus to be the bride adorned for her husband, ready to accept God's love. It is this love, ever renewed, ever
renewing, to which we must open our hearts, so that we can embrace the
closeness with God that is our gift through the sacrifice and glorification of
Jesus on the cross, so that we, too, can love one another as Jesus loved us.
This reflection is based on Fr. Pat's Scripture Class.
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