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The Commandment to Love One Another Homily Sunday, May 21, 6th Sunday of Easter at St. Joseph Parish, Detroit, and Sweetest Heart of Mary, Detroit
“Children, love one another.” This is what St. John said to his congregation, over and over. “Children, love one another.” John the evangelist, who wrote the books of the bible which bear his name, I mean the Gospel, the three epistles and the book of revelation, turned to that first community again and again to stress, “Love one another!” I imagine that early community going to Church on Sunday saying to one another, “I wonder what the Apostle John will preach about today,” and the rest of the company chanting in, not with sarcasm but with joy, “Children, love one another.” What is Jesus asking of us in today’s readings? Why is it difficult? How are we to go about it? These are today’s questions. Jesus commands us to love one another. It’s like this: God is love. He isn’t alone and in solitude for all eternity, but he is a community of persons, a tad bit like a family is a community of persons. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yet God is so perfect that there is no division between these persons, they share one substance, and the three persons are the one God. So when we love one another, we not only imitate God, but we also truly become like him. Indeed, we participate in God’s own love by loving one another, much like a room in your home participates in a small, beautiful part of the sunlight that emanates from the sun. Let us fill our souls with the light of God by loving one another. It is sometimes difficult to love one another. The world today has built up a cult to self love: there are magazines dedicated to it, self-love is the therapy offered by mental health experts, self-gratification is at the core and essence of the advertising that bombards us every day. This is why Jesus reminds us, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you,” to overcome our pride. Original sin disrupted radically the love we have for one another, and attacked even matrimonial love at its root. We fail to love one another when we USE one another to gratify our own selves, or to boost our self love. We then begin treating others as means, instead of end. And this exaltation of our own selves, this idolatry of the self, has a name: pride. Pride is the worst enemy of love. From the tree of pride come forth fruits such as gossip, criticism, slander, sarcasm, making others the butt of our jokes, anger, hatred, thinking of ourselves as better than others, the desire to be the most wanted or most desired, aggression, arrogance, eagerness to control others, and an endless abyss of other evils. Children, love one another! But how? The first way to grow in love is to cultivate the interior life. For from love of God love of neighbor will flow. I am not fooled by those who claim to love God, to have great prayerful or supernatural experiences, then go about sinning against charity. Such poor souls are far from neighbor, far from God and far from love. “No one has greater love than this, than to lay down his life for his friends,” Jesus tells us. Therefore, if you want to love your neighbor, die for your neighbor. Sacrifice yourself for your neighbor, especially if he is your enemy. Sacrifice proves the purity of love, like hot fire proves the purity of metal. Jesus did not give us a suggestion, but a command, to love one another. Add this to the list of the ten commandments, and when you go to confession, after you examine yourself on the ten commandments, examine yourself on this one too, and see where you have failed to fulfill this most beautiful of all commandments. By humbly repenting from our failures to love, by an assiduous prayer life, and by sacrificing ourselves for others, will we become like God, fill our souls with his life, and feel that true joy Jesus promised, and our joy will become complete. (cf. Jn 15:9-17) |