Today's gospel recounts the giving of the commandment that we love one another. It is the commandment on which we base our lives because it encapsulates the message of the Good News: in Jesus Christ God has given us a great gift, one that transforms both heaven and earth, reaching to the deepest foundations of human experience; reaching into every life and leaving no place, no heart, untouched.
The commandment to love one another is a simple and easy message, yet it also calls to us from the depths of experience. It is the message of reciprocity between us and God. As we have received, so we are to give in return. Thus the commandment to love one another contains a twofold movement. It has to do both with God's love for us, and with our responsibility to love others.
We recall that God sent Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. The transforming power of God in our lives is a witness to the great love we have received. The message of God's reprieve to humanity brings to mind the most evangelical qualities of our faith; that is, it embodies the gospel message that is personal to us in our salvation, in our relationship to Christ and one another. It is the message that God comes into our lives and makes us new. It is the message of the grace of God: of receiving undeserved favor in being saved from sin to eternal life.
Recently, I reflected on the idea that in order to receive the goodness of God that we must present ourselves to God as we are. At any stage in our lives we must be able to love the person that God made. Without pretense or flight to fantasy we fully accept ourselves, who we are and as we are, not more or less, as the handiwork of God—we are God's ongoing creation, revealing the transforming power of love.
A friend of mine commented, "I think we also have to be willing to help others while knowing that we are far from perfection... We are called to share what we have been given and what He has allowed us to know, even if we may still be struggling with certain issues, or far away from any level of heroic virtue in our own lives." Indeed such is the beginning of carrying out the commandment to love. First, before we can love others, we must love who we are, we must accept the person God made in ourselves.
To fulfill the commandment to love one another we must first receive the love of God in our lives and then share it with the whole world. To love one another is not an option. It cannot be given only to those whom we like; we are to offer it to everyone. To do so is the foundation of Christian ethics. Loving others is our primary responsibility: the true litmus test—the shibboleth—of our personal faith.
More than simply being an attitude that we convince ourselves we possess, we must ascertain that the love we hold claim to is real in action. We must offer it in though kindness, mercy, compassion, and acceptance of all others. Our daily actions toward others deeply reveal the love of God active in our lives. It is evident in the quality of friendship—or even the mere friendliness—that we offer each stranger, each passerby, each family member, and each and every coworker or acquaintance. Daily we have multiple opportunities to fulfill the personal and immediate dimension of obeying the commandment to love one another. There is also the universal dimension. It is no less real, and no more ideal, than the love we are to offer in our daily encounters.
The universal of the commandment is evident in our willingness, our capacity, to give to the whole world from the good that we have been given. The degree to which we are willing to take a stand as peacemakers and healers literally shows the love of God active in our souls. Love approaches her enemies with an olive branch in hand and looks to the future with hope for coming generations. Like a mother protecting her young, love considers the needs of her children first.
In following the global commandment to love we must have an eye toward the future that is full of hope. We must seek to build a world that is hospitable to all: a world free of war, where peace is won by giving rather than by the proliferation of might. Love looks to a world where we are willing to share our good things with others. Love is to share peace, to share the wealth of our nations, to share food and medicine, to share our lands with strangers and, and to protect and preserve the planet for future generations. To love one another is to give without counting the cost or reckoning who we give it to. It is to hold and to bind, to forbear and to forgive. Love is to give completely of ourselves knowing that all things are but God's good gifts to us first.
When we accept the responsibility—the commandment—to love, we will be known as the disciples of our Lord. Then our eyes might catch the vision of a world and a future full of hope, one where all things are made new.
"...where peace is won by giving." In our own little worlds, and then collectively. A Divine vision.
Posted by: Gabrielle | May 08, 2007 at 12:22 AM
My own struggle is to be willing to offer myself as I am. Shouldn't I wait until I am perfected -- until the degree is complete, untill I have more spiritual direction under my, belt until I am more sure of God's plan. I always seem to have a good reason for holding back.
Maybe the time is now. Maybe I am the person God needs me to be to do this work at this time. After all He does equip the called if who put all their trust in Him.
Why then am I so prone to hold back?
Posted by: Maggie | May 08, 2007 at 05:18 PM
Well, Maggie, I'm not sure what you're holding back on, but it seems we usually hold back because it is a survival thing, or because in one way or another, we've been taught to or conditioned into doing so. And be sure to send this back to me in 5 minutes or so - I'll need it! - but just put your hand in His and run, now. He doesn't go anywhere bad, and knows where all the loose gravel is. (Plus, He'll yank you right off the road, if it doesn't lead to the one He has in mind.)
Gabrielle, I know of instances where peace was won by giving. There's little that is sweeter than that.
And DDW, the only olive branch that works is the one woven of and offered in humility. Without that greening, it's a dead thing, and is rejected as a dead thing, which we see all the time at global bargaining tables. Indeed, the Commandment is of the same love we offer at our daily tables, only on a larger scale, and thus, say what anyone will, this is why I like Pres. Carter so much. He put his money and elbow grease where his mouth is, both globally and in Habitats. No duplicity in him, and I find that admirable because I think he did base it on Gospel love, without the slightest embarrassment. Something this nation is not used to.
Posted by: Carol | May 09, 2007 at 03:38 PM
Maggie, I was just reading your post of May 4th about your recent experience during Adoration. Maybe things are getting stirred up (or around) a bit now; out with the old yeast, in with the new, as you were describing. This is a great time, liturgically speaking, to be "rising", isn't it? :)
Posted by: Gabrielle | May 11, 2007 at 12:37 AM