Daily Reflection Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter

We continue in the great fourteenth chapter of John. Today’s passage from verses 21-26 of that chapter in the Last Supper account of John contains the central message of Jesus during his last night with his disciples before his death and resurrection. “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” Before this in verse 15 Jesus had said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” And earlier in chapter 13, after Judas Iscariot had left, he told them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” That was also Jesus’ last commandment to them.
 
Many people try to define what God’s commandments are and they often amount to what we would call rules and regulations, a kind of “do this and not that” sort of understanding. That is, frankly after all, what the Ten Commandments are. And many feel that by being obedient to those commandments (and they tend to multiply far beyond those ten!), they are fulfilling their obligation, as it were.
 
There is a problem with that understanding, however. The problem is revealed in two scripture passages, the first is today’s (“Those who love me will keep my word,” coupled with “Love one another as I have loved you.”) and the second is the beginning of 1Cor 13. For the Apostle Paul tells us quite bluntly that without love, we have nothing. Even if we have a faith that can move mountains. Even if we can speak in the tongues of angels and can understand all mysteries. Even if we give everything we have to the poor and sacrifice our very selves! Without love, it is all of no worth. That is a most extraordinary thing.
 
Coupled with Jesus’ final commandment (and the operative part of that is as I have loved you), we have a profoundly and altogether different understanding of God’s commandments as mere rules and regulations. For when Jesus tells us that the Father and he will come and make their homes within all who love him (Jesus), he is also telling us that the only way to do that (love him) is to love one another in exactly the same way that Jesus loves us.
 
In the end, love is all that matters. As St. Augustine said, “Love, and do what you will.” For at what we call (without much understanding) the final judgement, Jesus is not going to ask us how many times we went to church, nor how often we prayed, nor how much money we donated or how often we fasted or how many good deeds we did or even how well we kept ourselves on “the straight and narrow.” The one and only thing the Lord will ask us is, “Did you love one another as I love you?”
 
And that love, the love that Jesus showed to us, forgives everything (including one’s self), never judges or condemns or even criticizes (even one’s self), it asks for nothing in return, it loves everyone the same, accepts all things without question, bears all things without any bitterness or grudge or blame, sees everyone as worth dying for, has no pride and never feels better than anyone rather it is all meek and humble and small, sees everything as somehow a gift from God, knows oneself as saved from sin and selfishness by God’s gift, and rejoices in everyone and everything. Love like this is only available from above, from God the source of all love and who is love. It is poured out on the whole human race but only recognized by those who have humbled themselves to know that they know nothing and have nothing except what God gives them. It is something we continually grow into through active seeking and continual prayer that is always ready to surrender false (selfish) understandings for God’s revealed truths. It requires ever deepening trust in God alone (which means to abandon trusting in anything else). It is recognized in the deep gratitude we feel upon receiving it. It is always focused out upon the other and always away from the self for it is to lose your self. It is really to die to oneself after which, in the great paradox, we then come to be truly alive and truly free. It is something we must continually pray for but also believe that God longs to give it to us completely (“I came that they may have life, and life in its fulness.”). It is only ourself that stands in the way of our receiving this love and discovering how to love everyone, including ourselves, as Jesus loves us. “Lose yourself and you will find yourself.”