As I have loved you

Do we really love the way our Lord loved? He loved the way the Father loved Him. And that love is perfect, eternal, immutable. . . get all the superlatives on love and that is the love with which the Father loved His son, Jesus our Lord, and the way Jesus has loved us. We say, "But that is God. Mine is only a human love." The beloved apostle, John says: "God is Love" (1 John 4:16). No wonder God’s love for us is that perfect; it is His nature.

The thinking on love today is so muddled up. Boy meets girl, look into each other’s eyes, then wonder what hit them. The attraction so the saying goes is "love at first sight". If I can take possession of the world, I’ll lay it at your feet, my love." The girl rises to Cloud 9. So they marry on Cloud 9. After a month, the cloud evaporates; they find their feet are stuck to the ground – the wife faces the thousand and one household worries; the husband finds her irritable and there he is all run down after a day’s hard work. What hit them on first instance, and where is that now? Was it love that hit them?

In his Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus insists on love: "Remain in My love." How? "You will remain in My love if you keep My commandments, even as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love." The most forgotten word nowadays: Commandment: We have forgotten there are commandments of God. But the Lord reminds us: "This is My commandment: Love one another as I have loved you . . . You are my friends if you do what I command you . . ." For Christians, love is not an option; it is a command.

Love one another? Does that mean saying "I love you" all the time or in a much more modern twang, "Hi, luv ya." No Our Lord spells it all out: "Keep My commandments" which means no strange other ‘gods’ in our life because He alone in the Lord; no irreverence of God's name, mind you; no unholy disrespect of father or mother or elders; no taking the life of anyone including our own; no adultery, remember, no stealing; no lies against one’s fellowmen; no stealing of another’s wife much less of another’s property, or money in your charge whether you are in government or nongovernment office. Why these are all negatives. Is God a negative God who enunciates in a negative way? God is very positive abut those negatives; He cannot be negative because that would be an imperfection. But why don’t we want the commandments to be in the negative "don’t, don’t, don’t"? Why? Because we do not want to be reminded of what we cannot do which we have been doing. That puts us into a moral hara-kiri. We want it positive like ‘keep your own wife’. At least that is in the future tense. Somehow it places the other woman under cover and you are saved from a guilt complex. But that is what Jesus says – "Love one another" and that simply means we do not (in the negative again) do any of the above. Underscore the negatives. Only the first three are our duties to God directly and the seven are our duties to our neighbors. Jesus said it is serving God and loving God if we fulfill the seven. And we don’t say we love God if we are remiss on those seven duties towards our neighbor.

Jesus can sound very unromantic, indeed. Love in its stark reality. True love indeed is not as easy as instant attraction and wondering on Cloud 9 "what hit me". It is an honest-to-goodness following of the Lord in the love between Father and Son by fulfilling the first commandments of the law: "you shall love the Lord your God . . . and your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 19:27). And for that, Jesus promises: "All this I tell you that My joy may be yours and your joy may be complete." Take it from Jesus. When love is perfect, sacrifice is joy.

Sunday Easter Week 6 Jn. 15:9-17