I love you

 I love you – how many times in your life have you wanted to hear someone say that?  We want to hear it from our friends and family, our spouses and children.  But imagine what it would feel like to hear it from God… directly.  And yet Jesus says just this in this past Sunday’s gospel!  I love you, he tells his disciples.  We tend to focus on the fact that Jesus is issuing a commandment here, and so his own confession of love can go unnoticed:

I love you…  

Love one another as I love you…  

This is my commandment:  love one another as I love you…  
I love you...  

One wonders if the disciples heard it? Or if they just heard the word command-ment? And one wonders if they realized the full import of Jesus’ calling them friends?  After all, friendship means, literally, the state or condition of being loved…  So when Jesus says, I call you friends, he is saying that they are dear to him; for them, he will give up everything, including his life:  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  It is a radical promise of gift to other.

We are all called to be gift to other, to love one another, as we heard in this Sunday's reading. And when we do, we are also demonstrating our love for God above all things for his own sake, repaying the Lord, in our own small way, for all the good he has done for us, and, in our own small way, saying I love you back to God.  Surely God wants to hear those words, too.

Image source:  Divine Love, Our Lady of Pity Catholic Church, Swaffham, UK