Are you ready to
let God expand your vision?
As the Son of God,
Jesus knows the fullness of his Father’s love:
that love encompasses all he is; it is not separate from him. When he says to his disciples, I love you, they can’t even begin to
take in the full meaning of his statement.
Jesus will, just a few short chapters later in John’s Gospel, lay down his life for his friends so
that the sins of all humankind might be forgiven, but, as they will learn, his love
for them is greater than death. Jesus tells
the disciples that they should remain in his love, that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. They have shared love on this earth; the
disciples must continue to allow Jesus’ love to fill them, and to love others
with that same love. If they can do so,
they will be expanding their own vision, because they will come to understand
that he loves them without boundaries, without limitation, and they must go
forth and do the same. To live that
reality is profoundly humbling.
The First Letter of John will echo this sentiment: where
humankind creates a chasm between themselves and God, God bridges it, because
God loves perfectly: love is of God, love is the essence of
God, the energy of God, the life source God offers to us all. We have life through Jesus because we come to
know love through him in a way we didn’t before. That love reaches beyond human limitations,
expanding our vision. Consider the case
of Cornelius, in the Acts of the Apostles.
Cornelius, a Gentile, has loved God and therefore knows God, so he is
open to the revelation of God that Peter brings to him. Moreover, every manifestation of love is a
manifestation of God. In Acts, God shifts the order of things,
accepting Gentiles into the fullness of redemption as he accepted the Jewish
people. It is a fulfillment of Psalm 98: The
Lord has revealed to the nations his saving power…
If, through faith
or conversion, you have come to understand God differently than before, you
must, as the psalmist notes, sing to the
Lord a new song. How could it be the
same song when God has done something you haven’t anticipated? God is
constantly revealing new things to us, challenging the way we look at things,
expanding our vision, through his infinite love and care. So sing that new song, allow his love to fill
you, that your joy might indeed be complete!
This post is based
on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
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