Fr. JC Maximilian

“Love one another as I love you.” “Remain in my love.”

There is a lot of talking about love in today’s readings. Jesus tells us to remain in His love, and He commands – He doesn’t merely suggests – that we love one another as He loves us. It is important to note that Jesus does not tell us to love as we would like to love, but we are to love in the same way that He loves us. So, what is Jesus’ love like?

We get a big hint from today’s second reading. St. John tells us that love is not that we have loved God, but rather that God has first loved us. Love is the first and last thing about God. As St. John puts it, “God is love.” This seems so simple a thing, yet so many people seem to have a very difficult time with this simple truth, that God is Love. For too many people, God is a harsh judge, just waiting to catch us in doing something wrong. It is true that God is will judge us, but He will first be love in judging us. For many others, God is rather distant, and we need to say the right prayers, the right way, and the right number of them, to get God to do us a favor. When we do not get our way, often we treat God this way, thinking we are not praying enough or the right way to get God to notice us and do what we want.

However, all of these ways of looking at God fails to see that God is first, last and always LOVE! And what is even better, God freely gives us His love as a gift. We do not need to earn it – which is a good thing because there is nothing we could do to earn it. God’s Love is pure gift. We call this grace.

Naturally we see this in Jesus’ love. Right from the beginning Jesus, in His love, wanted to get as close to us as possible. In one of St. Paul’s letters, there is a hymn that speaks about how Jesus set aside the Glory which is properly His, so that He could humble Himself to become a Man like us in all things but sin. Jesus, purely in a gift of love, took on our human nature, our flesh, so that He could walk with us, talk with us, eat with us – just be with us. He did this so that we could experience God’s great love for us, and Jesus proved that His love was total, a total gift of Himself by suffering and dying for us.

We really need to ponder this truth of God’s love for us. Why? Because, if we do not allow God’s love to penetrate our hearts, which can often be hardened with sin and pride, then we will never be able to really love. We will never be able to fulfill Jesus’ command that we love one another as He loves us. We will never be able to have the completeness of joy that Jesus says that He wants us to have.

This seems like it should be the easiest thing in the world to do, but we do make it so hard at times. Many of us have a hard time allow someone else to take care of us, to love us. We think that that makes us weak, or is a sign of immaturity. We want to be independent and do things on our own. Yet Jesus tells us that we are to remain in His love, to let down our defenses so that we can be completely a washed in His love. This is the kind of closeness and intimacy that Jesus calls us to. This is what it means to be in communion with Jesus. We can only love God as he should be loved if we first experience His love for us.

God’s love is the fuel for Christian life. This past week we celebrated the sacrament of Confirmation in our parish. Msgr. Gene Reebeck came, representing the Bishop, to Confirm about 60 of our young people. Msgr. Reebeck gave a wonderful homily just on this theme. He told all those present that our Faith – which is our relationship with Jesus – gives us power. And where do we go to grow in this power? Right here at Mass. In the Mass we participate right in the ultimate manifestation of Jesus’ love. We see it right there (point to the crucifix). Jesus showed the depth of His love for us in His sacrifice for us. Sacrifice is the ultimate sign of love. Jesus says in today’s Gospel, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

The Eucharist is that sacrifice of love. It is not a sign or symbol of Jesus. It IS Jesus’ love at its greatest. It is the unbloodied sacrifice, yet one and the same as the bloodied sacrifice of the Cross. When we receive the Eucharist worthily, we are made one with Christ Jesus. We truly are remaining in His love. The Eucharist reminds us that we cannot live our Christian life only by our own strength. In the Eucharist, God himself becomes our strength and nourishment. Receiving Holy Communion is receiving God himself into our very lives!

How can we begin to live this more deeply? First we can look forward to it during the week. We can also be sure to repent our sins and selfishness before receiving Communion. And if we have fallen into mortal sin, we have to give our souls a power-wash by going to confession before receiving Communion. We can dress in a special way for Mass, using our best clothes to express our awareness of the special, supernatural encounter that happens every time we receive Communion. We can come a few minutes early to Mass, so as to take some time to pray in the silence of our hearts.

One day two five-year-old children were praying together. One prayed, “Thank you for coming into our hearts, because now we can pray to you inside us.” The other child continued, “Yes, he’s really great company and we will never be alone.” May Holy Communion lead us to live the communion in charity, like those two preschool mystics (I got this story from, P.J. Cameron, Jesus, Present Before Me: Meditations for Eucharistic Adoration).