GOD IS LOVE AND LOVE IS THE ESSENCE OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE
God is love is the greatest single statement about God in the whole Bible. There is no doubt that love is the essence of the Christian faith and life. For God is love, we are called to live in love as Christians. This life of love is not how we love, but how Jesus loves us. Our love is imperfect and erroneous but God´s love is perfect.
Therefore, on this sixth Sunday of Easter, we celebrate and reflect on the implication of the resurrection of Christ on the Christian faith and life. In other words, the resurrection of Christ makes all Christians instruments of perpetuating God´s love in their Christian faith and practice.
On the early Sundays of Easter, our reflections are on the mystery of the resurrection. The difficulties of the disciples as well as Christians today believing in the resurrection. Additionally, the Risen Christ comes to their help and ours too through the Scripture and the Sacramental celebration of the Eucharist to understand and appreciate the resurrection effect in their lives and our lives as well.
Now, at the end of the Eastertide, we reflect on the implications for the Christian community and the Christian faith and life. Our greatest challenge is not only in understanding the mystery of the resurrection as Christians but also applying this mystery to our daily life experience as individuals, the community of families, congregations of religious bodies and the universal church.
If Christ has truly risen then the effects of the resurrection should be seen in our personal and communal faith and life as Christians.
OUR THEME
As we draw closer toward the end of the Eastertide that culminating with the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost. The readings this Sunday are all about love. We should love one another as Jesus loves us. He promised us, the Holy Spirit: the spirit of love will help us to express and understand what love means, especially from the perspective of God. God is love.
Hence, today’s Scripture passages declare the profound truth that those who believe in the Resurrected Christ are to obey his commandment of love – “Love one another as I have loved you.” this commandment is different from everything we know about love before Christ. The Shema law of Israel required with we love our neighbour like ourselves. This love is not perfect.
A perfect love unconditional, impartial, sacrificing and rooted in God. For God is love and the source of true, authentic or genuine love. Therefore, we must or should love like God-the Son demonstratively shows us and commands us to do.
THE FIRST READING: ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 10:25-26, 34–35, 44–48
The chief shepherd of the early Christian community, Apostle Peter´s vision in Acts 10:9-16 ushered in the context of the first Scripture reading of this Sunday. In his vision, he was told not to declare what God has created as unclean. Thus, preparing him to open the Christian door of grace, mercy and above all God´s love to the Gentile family of Cornelius as well as the Gentile nations.
Hence, through the action and guidance of the Holy Spirit, Peter came to a hard realization and acceptance of God´s unconditional love without partiality or favouritism. Contextually, it is important to remember that the Jews believed that other nations were quite outside the mercy, grace and love of God. The strict Jew would have no contact with a Gentile or even with a Jew who did not observe the Law. In particular, he would never have as a guest nor ever be the guest of a man who did not observe the Law.
Therefore, when Peter accepted the invitation and hospitality of Cornelius a Roman Centurion as well as stepping into Cornelius´ house. He broke the barriers of cultural-religious division and discrimination against a people created by God.
THE BASIC LESSONS OF PETER WITH THE HOUSEHOLD OF CORNELIUS
God´s love, mercy and grace are universal to all people, nations and individuals without exclusion. There is no room for special treats or preference as an instrument (as pastors, priests or agents) of God bridging cultural-religious gaps or breaking down cultural-religious barriers.
Peter´s response, “Stand up; I am only mortal” testifies to his simplicity as a leader of the Christian community. It tells us too that there is no room for clericalism or feeling of importance among pastors of souls.
His declaration was one truthfulness, openness and courage among narrow-minded people who could become aggressive and antagonistic in the face of religious matters. Playing God as determinants of who could or should be saved.
Through the guide and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he confrontationally declares new founded truth or realization of all-inclusivity in God with no exception.
Through Peter´s openness or disposition under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we learn that Christians and the Christian community should be open to new inspirations and enlightenment of the truth.
The survival of Christianity is not only preaching and teaching the truth but also its openness to the light or rays of new enlighten truths in the light of new revelations or understanding to existing realities.
There is basic conservation of faith and truth in the Christian life but also there must be this realization that the truth of God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is open to the signs of time at every age, season, or moment. God revealed truths are closed in all matters of faith, there are ongoing revelations or enlightening truths.
Man is not the epitome of God´s salvation through love, grace and mercy but only a channel or instrument in the hands of God. Without the Holy Spirit guiding us the truth can never be attained.
This personality and character of Cornelius revealed God´s grace and mercy worked among non-Christian even unknowingly to them.
(i) Cornelius was a Roman centurion stationed at Caesarea. His qualifications of the centurion make him a desired good leader, of steady and prudent mind, as well as he was a man who primarily knew what courage and loyalty were.
(ii) Cornelius was a God-fearer. Though, he did not accept circumcision and the Law; but he attended the synagogue and he believed in one God and the pure ethic of the Jewish religion.
Cornelius then was a man who was seeking after God, and as he sought God, God found him.
(iii) Cornelius was a man given to charity; he was characteristically kind. His search for God had made him love men, and he who loves his fellow-men is not far from the kingdom of God.
(iv) Cornelius was a man of prayer. Perhaps as yet he did not know God to whom he prayed; but, according to the light that he had, he lived close to God.
THE SECOND READING: 1 JOHN 4:7-10
St. John reminds us in the second reading today that God is not just a God of love but that God is love itself. This Biblical truth of God is love changes everything we know before about God. This knowledge and truth radicalize our notion of God as the Judge, the King, the Law-giver, or Policeman-God who considers our bad or good deeds to punish us or reward us.
The image of God as a punisher will only raise nothing in our heart but fear, in the face of such a God we can expect nothing but punishment. Fundamentally, for John love has its origin in God (1Jn.4:7). It is from God who is love that all love takes its source. Hence, God is love changes this horrible picture of crude and sadistic God known to many for ages.
LOVE IS NOT OPTIONAL TO CHRISTIANS
It is important to note that to love our brothers and sisters is not an option, we can choose or not. It is the primary and most basic command of the Christian faith and life. The Christian faith is believing in Jesus Christ while the Christian life is loving one another. For John, it is so because to love our brothers and sisters in to be in God and to know God who is love.
Furthermore, he justified the TWO GREATEST PROOFS why God´s love for us in Christ Jesus shows that the essence of God is love.
“God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.” The mystery of the Incarnation when the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. God: Immanuel not only created us but also wanted to be among us perpetually. (Is 7:14; Mt 1:23) This is one of the greatest manifestations of God´s love.
“In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” The mystery of the passion and death of Jesus Christ for us on the cross. This is the peck of God´s love; dying on the cross for us and our sins. (John 3:16; John 15:13; Rom 5:8)
Equally, in the Living Tradition of our faith, St. Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica II, q.20, art. 1 interpreting God as love by defining “love as the will to go to a person.” In other words, for Aquinas love is not an emotion but a choice, or an act of the will-that is, the will to do good to or for others.
As such, for Aquinas, this is what God does in the mystery of the Incarnation and Passion of Jesus Christ. Both of these mysteries best and fully revealed the love of God for humanity. This is because in the mysteries of God becoming one with us or dying to save us. He shows his choice and will to save human beings through these mysteries. He could have saved humanity in many other ways than the Incarnation or the passion of his only Begotten Son.
SIGNIFICANTLY, THERE ARE MANY ASSUMPTIONS OF THIS BRIEF BUT IMPORTANT READING
Love has its origin in God and he is the source of all love. Human love is a reflection of something in the divine nature itself. “We are never nearer to God than when we love. “ Clement of Alexandria said when thinks of God is love.
Love has a double relationship with God. It is only by knowing God that we learn to love and it is only by loving that we learn to know God (1Jn.4:7–8). Love comes from God, and love leads to God.
It is by love that God is known (1Jn.4:12). The best demonstration of God comes not from theological or philosophical arguments, beautiful homilies, and intellectual discourses on scripture or emotional or inspirational worships or pieties but a life of love.
God’s love is demonstrated in Jesus Christ (1Jn.4:9), especially through the mysteries of the incarnation and his passion and death on the cross. In Christ Jesus, God´s love is a love, which holds nothing back; a totally undeserved love.
Human love is a response to divine love (1Jn.1:19). We love because God loved us. God´s love awakens in us the desire to love him first and to love our fellow men and women as he loves them. Human life is a failure today in relationships, marriages, families, communities and the world full of pains, sorrows and tragedies because it does not have God who is love.
When love comes, fear goes. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, for fear is connected with punishment and he who fears have not reached love’s perfect state.” (1Jn.4:17–18). Indeed, God´s love changes our perspective or image of him the crude and sadistic God who only punishes or rewards us.
The love of God and love of man is indissolubly connected (1Jn.4:7, 11, 20, 21). The energy of love discharges itself along lines that form a triangle, whose points are God, self, and neighbour. This is why John says, with almost crude bluntness, that a man who claims to love God and hates his brother is nothing other than a liar.
By implication, if we are God´s image and likeness, we must also have love as our very nature. Hence, there is no room for hatred, discrimination or favouritism of any sort in the name of the race, tribe, religion, colour, sex, orientations, and ideology or culture, etc.
THE GOSPEL: JOHN 15:9-17
In the gospel text of St. John today, we learn that we are chosen by Jesus Christ to abide in love or his love. There is a fundamental demand of love Jesus places on us when he affirms “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” The emphasis is that we love one another, unlike ourselves but like how he (Christ) has loved us.
Christ love for us is not a wordy or verbal emotional love full of nice and pleasant words or thought. It was a concrete lived love in action. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
The most essential or critical question as ourselves today is HOW DID CHRIST LOVE US? Jesus’ teaching demonstrated God´s love and his nature of loving us:
He loves us unreservedly: Jn. 3:16
He loves us unconditionally: Acts. 10:34, Rom. 2:11,
He loves us sacrificially: Jn. 3:16, Jn. 10:11, Jn.10:18, Jn. 15:13
He loves us forgivingly: Lk. 23:34
He loves us understandingly: Is. 49:15
He loves us undeservingly: Rom. 5:8
He loves us generously and lavishly. 1 Jn. 4:10
He loves us extremely: Jn. 13:1,
Besides, the commandment to love one another as Christ loved us. The second key or central words of this passage of the gospel are those in which Jesus says that his disciples have not chosen him, but he has chosen them. It is important to know that living the Christian faith and life is a gift of God. It is not us who chose God, but God who chose in his love, grace, and mercy.
Ultimately, God´s love or choice makes us abide in Christ and Christ in us. It also makes us joyful and brings our joy its fullness. It makes us friends, not servants of God granting us the most profound peace with him. As well as makes God´s choicest friends bear fruits that last in the Christian faith and life.
OUR PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, the lover par excellence, teach us to know that love is not a feeling or mere expression of words, or thoughts about another person, but a choice, a will, or a concrete action to seek the good of the other person even if it means sacrificing one´s own good. May your spirit of love inflame our hearts with the power of true and authentic love from you; the Author and Source of all love through loving our brothers and sisters. Amen!
