Love one another

Fifth Sunday of Easter Year C

The 4th-century Father of the Church who has left us with the Latin translation of the Bible and commentaries on almost every book in the Bible, St Jerome, tells a story about the Apostle and evangelist St John. Having been the only apostle to be spared martyrdom, St John lived to a ripe old age. According to St Jerome, John, when he was old and frail and unable to walk, had to be carried by his disciples into the Christian assembly on the Lord’s Day. Every week, when asked to impart his wisdom onto the community, these were the same words he repeated to his congregation: “Little children, love one another.”

This went on week after week, until at last, more than a little weary of these repeated words, his disciples asked him, “Master, why do you always say this?” “Because,” John replied, “it is the Lord’s command, and if this only is done, it is enough.”

To say that this commandment is “enough” or sufficient may seem strange. The new commandment to “love one another,” seems overly horizontal and humanly limited. Our Lord must have known of the great commandment, quoted in the Synoptic Gospels, which is to love God and to love neighbour, and you can’t have one without the other. In fact, the Lord says, this love of God and others sums up everything else God commands. All Scripture hangs like a seamless coat on this single hook: love God by loving others.

For this reason, many Christians would believe that the commandment to just “love one another” seems too naively pedestrian and insufficient. It places too much responsibility on our moral strength and we could easily fail and collapse under the weight of its demands. The reason for thinking like this is that, we often equate this love with something wishy-washy. Just loving one another is too simplistic, too impractical. The world is far too complicated for mere human love, especially once we get beyond the one-on-one relationships.

I think much of the problem is that we don’t really know the love that Jesus taught, the love that Jesus lived. Many imagine this love to be mere tolerance. They imagine “love one another” to mean “live and let live,” a sort of “Whatever rocks your boat, as long as you let me rock mine.” Tolerance has led to moral relativism and this has devolved into normalisation of immoral behaviour - sodomy, adultery, multiple sexual partners, incest and even paedophilia. The tragic irony is that the tagline “love wins”, has come to be used so frequently to justify these abnormal sexual aberrations; and those who uphold traditional monogamous marriages and chaste relationships are labelled bigoted and judgmental.

Others imagine this love to be a kind of affection, good feelings toward others. “Love one another,” then, means “Get rid of all that negativity—good vibes for everyone!” Still others imagine this love to be basic decency. “Be nice to each other, use your manners, be polite”—this is what “Love one another” means, or so people claim.

Now there’s nothing wrong with tolerance, or affection, or basic decency. In fact, these are the bare minimum for being human together. They’re bottom-line attitudes and behaviour for a functioning human society. But these, in themselves, are not the love that our Lord taught, the love He lived. His love transcends mere feelings of affection, and it’s exponentially harder than simple kindness or even basic tolerance. People don’t get crucified for being nice.

So, what is this love that the Lord says is the be-all and end-all of human living? This is a kind of love, in the words of Pope Benedict, is a love that “seeks the good of the beloved…ready, and even willing, for sacrifice.” Love is giving one’s very self freely to and for the other, even when it hurts the giver. This is the love the Lord taught. This is the love He lived, all the way to the cross. Make no mistake: there’s nothing wishy-washy or mushy about this love.

What the world calls love today, is a counterfeit of love. What passes as love today, is another euphemism for sin. But the truth is that sin has nothing to do with love. In fact, sin is the exact opposite of authentic love. True love is in no way soft on sin—but it can turn our “sin lists” upside down. In a world of authentic fraternal love, then, sin and evil still exist—if anything they are even sharper, more pungent. In a world of authentic fraternal love, sin and evil are things to be actively resisted, even if this means you getting cancelled. In a world of authentic fraternal love, your own personal sins are for you to repent of, others’ personal sins are for you to forgive, and the world’s public sins are for you to resist.

So, we must be like the missionaries St Paul and St Barnabas in the first reading – we must never tire of putting “fresh heart into the disciples, encouraging them to persevere in the faith.” Love compels us Christians to preach the Good News in and out of season, even when it is unpopular to do so. We do so by reminding each other of the words of our Lord's commands: "Love one another" as our Lord has loved us. Seems simple enough but you and I know how challenging it is to live out the demands of love, which call us to not only pay lip service but sacrifice for the one whom we profess to love. So, love one another as how the Lord has loved us, "because it is the Lord's command, and if this only is done, it is enough."