THE COMMANDMENT OF LOVE


THURSDAY, FIFTH WEEK OF EASTER

Act 15:7-21; Ps 96:1-3,10; Jn 15:9-11

Keeping the Commandment of Love

There is no other way of discerning and coming to the knowledge of someone’s love for us apart from paying steady attention to the person’s words, actions, gestures, and facial expressions. All these are necessary to learn the other’s love language. When we do not devote time to learn the other’s love language, we will fail to understand the loving communication from the person. The same applies to our relationship with God. However, there is a bit of a difference arising from the fact that God is not physically present to us, which makes it a bit difficult to understand the loving communications of God. The difficulty is less when we know the real presence of God with us in all things and at all times. We must conceive and understand God to be the supreme Spirit, who alone exists of himself and is infinite in all perfections. He has gifted us with material and spiritual creations and continually communicates life. In this sense, we have understood creation as the school of divine knowledge. To learn of God’s love, we must pay attention to creation, his word revealed in the scriptures, and ultimately to the Son of Man, the Incarnate Son of God. Without this attention, it is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive God’s love for us.

Because of the necessity of the knowledge of God’s love for our salvation and the fact that we have to receive and reciprocate the love on a personal level, the Son of God, who gives the knowledge of the Father, took our human nature. He became man to communicate this love of the Father to us in human language. He emphasised this when he said that the prince of this world has no power over him and that he would go to his passion and death to let the world know that he loves the Father who sent him to save us. In today’s gospel passage, he reveals his knowledge of the Father’s love and beckons us to understand his love for us, which is the same as the Father’s love. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” Love and commandment are not separate things. The loveable object is the commandment within us when we know and fall in love with it. Love is a law from the object of our love binding us to the object through our desires. Thus, the Father is in the Son of Man as the Holy Spirit, the love of the Father, guiding him to fulfil the will of the Father, to remain one with him.

The Lord Jesus Christ did not establish his love in the disciples until his passion, death, and resurrection. The paschal mysteries of the Lord are the cause of knowledge and love of the Son of Man in the disciples. Hence, they received the Holy Spirit only after their profession of faith in the resurrection of the Lord. The only way we can know and keep his commandment is to know his love, which is the Holy Spirit He sends into our hearts at our profession of faith in baptism. We grow in keeping his commandment the more we enter the mysteries of the Son of Man, which are the mysteries of the love of the Father for us. Saint Peter refers to the Holy Spirit given to the pagans as God’s commandment or new law given to them for their salvation, different from the old laws. “In fact, God, who can read everyone’s heart, showed his approval of them by giving the Holy Spirit to them just as he had to us. God made no distinction between them and us, since he purified their hearts by faith.” By our profession of faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have come to know the love of God, which is the Holy Spirit given to us by God. The love, the Holy Spirit, is the new commandment we must obey to remain in communion with the Father as members of Jesus Christ. With this understanding, the psalmist beckons us to sing in praise of God’s love and mercy. “O sing a new song to the Lord, sing to the Lord all the earth. O sing to the Lord, bless his name. Proclaim his help day by day, tell among the nations his glory and his wonders among all the peoples.”

Let us pray: O God, by whose grace, though sinners, we are made just and, though pitiable, made blessed, stand, we pray, by your works, stand by your gifts, that those justified by faith may not lack the courage of perseverance. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. 

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