Called to Love
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The readings for the sixth Sunday of Easter Year B bring some of the most consequential statements for our Christian faith. In the first letter of John, we read that “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) Moreover, in the gospel reading Jesus says to his disciples: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:11) These two statements form the fundament for what we believe and whom we are called to be as Christians. These are challenging statements, however, they have shaped our lives more than we can even imagine.
Saint Augustine once said that if the phrase that God is love was the only thing that John had said in his letter, that would be more than enough for our salvation. This simple statement summarizes and sums up the whole revelation contained in the Old and New Testament. Whatever God has done or said in the Scriptures, he did so because he is love. We Christians take for granted statements like that, and yet for non-Christians they are absolutely surprising and astounding. If we realize that we speak of that love which manifested itself through the cross of Christ it becomes even more remarkable. Religions use different terms to describe their divine figures: powerful, omnipotent, omniscient, transcendent, etc. Only Christianity brings this radical revelation that God is love. And if he is so, therefore, he loves you and he wants you to experience this love.
God is reaching out to us to communicate his message of love, but we often ignore it due to our spiritual deafness. In the fall of Adam and Eve our spiritual receiver broke down what makes it hard for us to trust in God’s intentions and plans. But for those who have enough trust and humility to welcome this gift something surprising happens—their lives change.
“Love one another as I love you”, Jesus says. We often understand these words as moralism or a commitment. Jesus tells me to love and so I have to do it or at least to try. But in Jesus’ understanding it is a simple consequence of the fact that it is God who loved us first. To be loved by God means to have a share in his own divine life, to participate in the life of the Trinity through the Holy Spirit in the Church. God who is communion of persons wants to extend itself to bring more people to communion with him.
When we allow ourselves to be included in that communion of love then spontaneously, we reach out to others to share with them that gift. We want others to have the same experience. As Bishop Fulton Sheen once said to love you need three persons. In Christianity there is never only God and myself, there is always my neighbor as well. Therefore, any authentic encounter with God always leads us to encounter another person. In Christianity there is no loneliness, there is love.
