05-15-2012, 11:30 AM
Scripture Reflections
13 May, 2012, Sixth Sunday of Easter
LOVING THROUGH CHRIST IN THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 9:26-31; 1 JN 3:18-24; JN 15:1-8
What is the secret to real happiness in life? It is in love expressed in meaningful relationships. Meaningful relationships and true love sets a person free and gives him a joy that the world cannot give. Love is the only reason why we continue to live. Without love, all material and physical satisfactions cannot bring us real happiness. No matter how much wealth, power, fame and status we have, without love, we feel empty. This is because man is created for love since he has been created in love. Man, who reflects the image of God and God’s image is love, necessarily takes his life after God as well.
Yet, the irony is that although we know that we are called to love, yet many of us have found that love brings much sadness and even misery in our lives as well. We discover that love is costly. It demands sacrifices and is meant only for strong hearts. Wounded by hurtful and broken relationships, many have become skeptical of love. This explains why those who have been betrayed by love lose all courage and faith in human relationships. However, it is not so much because love brings misery but because we have never truly loved in the first place. We have only loved ourselves in a selfish manner, worshiping ourselves as the idol of our life.
In the final analysis, most of our so-called love of the other is self-centered love. We love ourselves under the pretext of loving others. We are nice and good to people only because we expect them to do likewise. As in the gospel, Jesus says, even the pagans do likewise. Our love is conditional. Rightly so, Pope Benedict in his first encyclical, “God is love” says that love is so much misunderstood in the world today.
Everyone claims to love. Very often, we confuse possessiveness with love. For the world love is considered love when we become possessive of those whom we love to the extent that we do not even allow our partners to befriend any other person. In the name of love, we control the movements, the activities and even the hobbies of our loved ones. In the name of love, men and women cohabit, claiming that they must get to know each other before they get married, as if relationships can be perfected in a matter of a couple of years. In the name of love too, a man has premarital sex with a woman so that they can know whether they are sexually compatible, as if a marriage relationship is reduced to sex alone. And women, so afraid that their guys would leave them, give their bodies to have an emotional grip on them. The truth is that we can justify and rationalize everything we do under the guise of love.
When we examine deeper the cause of our confusion, it is because many of us are insecure and lack love for ourselves and as a result, are incapable of loving the other person. This explains why many are so desperate to be loved. We even confuse admiration with love. We seek attention by over-dressing and under-dressing. Sometimes women who dress scantily cannot be entirely exonerated when they become an object of lust, because they have a part to play in seducing men to desire their bodies, knowing that human beings are susceptible to sexual temptation. Instead of telling people to love them, they are giving out the wrong signals, suggesting that they love their bodies. Would you wear expensive jewellery and walk along lonely streets at nights? Aren’t you tempting robbers? The irony is that we would not expose our jewellery for others to steal but we do not mind exposing our bodies to people!
How then can we find the capacity to love the other before self? It is for this reason that the fundamental message of Christian faith is the proclamation of God’s unconditional and prior love for us in His Son Jesus Christ who came to reveal and teach us the love of God. Jesus, who is truly human and divine, is the teacher of love. In His humanity, Jesus taught us how to love and be compassionate towards others. Jesus was a man totally for others. Jesus reminds us that true love is to put the interests and happiness of the other person first before ours. Indeed, as He remarked, “A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” Of course, what He has taught us, He lived it out Himself. Truly, “God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.”
In the same vein as the incident in Cornelius’ conversion shows, God’s love knows no boundaries. This was what Peter discovered for he said, “The truth I have now come to realise, he said, is that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” For if God has poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit on the pagans, and since they too were “speaking strange languages and proclaiming the greatness of God”, how could they continue to exclude the Gentiles from the Good News of salvation?
In the light of all that we have said, it is clear that we are called to love one another in the way Jesus loves us. Hence, he said, “This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.” Indeed, we are called to love even to the extent of laying down our lives for our friends. He has set for us the example and we are called to follow suit.
This explains why a little while later, Jesus said, “You are my friends, if you do what I command you. I shall not call you servants any more, because a servant does not know his master’s business; I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.” Indeed, we are truly His friends only if we are one with Him in this way of love. We can be called His friends only because we too have come to understand and be convinced that unless we love others the way God loves us in Jesus, we cannot be said to have loved authentically.
It is true that we all know that God loves us in Jesus. But we need to experience this love anew today. Indeed, without a deep encounter with God’s overwhelming love, we cannot love genuinely and definitely not altruistically, that is, strangers, or better still our enemies. If we want to love, thenSt John tells us that we must first know God who is love. He writes, “My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.”
Indeed, this is the basis of love. We are called to bear fruits of love only because He has loved us first. For He said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” It is through this same love we have received that we can be His emissaries of love. The love of Jesus for us entails a mission as well. Indeed, He said, “You did not choose me, no, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Love is a mystery and an election. But we are not simply loved for ourselves alone. We are loved so that we can in turn bring others to the love of God. Love is never kept for oneself.
How can we speak of God’s love for us in Jesus, a love that is real and not simply an historical idea? Only the Holy Spirit who is the bond of love between the Father and the Son can connect us with the love of God in person today. This was the case of the Jewish Christians in the early Church. Initially, they were reluctant to share their faith beyond their community. But once we are renewed with the love of God in us, then touched by God’s love, all boundaries are removed. Indeed, Peter would never have done what he did if not for the Holy Spirit who is the bond of love. It was courageous of him to oblige the invitation of Cornelius to stay with him for some days, which would have been unthinkable earlier, since Jews were not allowed to socialize with the Gentiles lest they became ritually unclean. So the Holy Spirit not only opened the mind of Peter but also gave him the courage to break out against the narrow religious and cultural norms of his days and to act for love and in the name of love at the risk of his own reputation and safety.
However, it is not enough simply to be touched by His love. Many have been touched by the Lord and experienced His love but they have forgotten His love so easily. Hence, we must take heed of the words of Jesus when He said, “Remain in my love.” How can we remain in His love? “If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments.” To remain in His love, we must perform the acts of love. Love cannot simply be a nice feeling. Love must be continuously acted out daily in our lives. To remember His love, we must live out that love in our lives. The norm of love must be based on the gospel, or rather, Jesus Himself. Once we take the risk of loving we will find ourselves growing in the capacity to love.
Once we come to this realization, then we will be truly set free to love and find true happiness in life. This is the promise of Jesus, “I have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete.” Only when we love like Christ can we find love fulfilling.
13 May, 2012, Sixth Sunday of Easter
LOVING THROUGH CHRIST IN THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 9:26-31; 1 JN 3:18-24; JN 15:1-8
What is the secret to real happiness in life? It is in love expressed in meaningful relationships. Meaningful relationships and true love sets a person free and gives him a joy that the world cannot give. Love is the only reason why we continue to live. Without love, all material and physical satisfactions cannot bring us real happiness. No matter how much wealth, power, fame and status we have, without love, we feel empty. This is because man is created for love since he has been created in love. Man, who reflects the image of God and God’s image is love, necessarily takes his life after God as well.
Yet, the irony is that although we know that we are called to love, yet many of us have found that love brings much sadness and even misery in our lives as well. We discover that love is costly. It demands sacrifices and is meant only for strong hearts. Wounded by hurtful and broken relationships, many have become skeptical of love. This explains why those who have been betrayed by love lose all courage and faith in human relationships. However, it is not so much because love brings misery but because we have never truly loved in the first place. We have only loved ourselves in a selfish manner, worshiping ourselves as the idol of our life.
In the final analysis, most of our so-called love of the other is self-centered love. We love ourselves under the pretext of loving others. We are nice and good to people only because we expect them to do likewise. As in the gospel, Jesus says, even the pagans do likewise. Our love is conditional. Rightly so, Pope Benedict in his first encyclical, “God is love” says that love is so much misunderstood in the world today.
Everyone claims to love. Very often, we confuse possessiveness with love. For the world love is considered love when we become possessive of those whom we love to the extent that we do not even allow our partners to befriend any other person. In the name of love, we control the movements, the activities and even the hobbies of our loved ones. In the name of love, men and women cohabit, claiming that they must get to know each other before they get married, as if relationships can be perfected in a matter of a couple of years. In the name of love too, a man has premarital sex with a woman so that they can know whether they are sexually compatible, as if a marriage relationship is reduced to sex alone. And women, so afraid that their guys would leave them, give their bodies to have an emotional grip on them. The truth is that we can justify and rationalize everything we do under the guise of love.
When we examine deeper the cause of our confusion, it is because many of us are insecure and lack love for ourselves and as a result, are incapable of loving the other person. This explains why many are so desperate to be loved. We even confuse admiration with love. We seek attention by over-dressing and under-dressing. Sometimes women who dress scantily cannot be entirely exonerated when they become an object of lust, because they have a part to play in seducing men to desire their bodies, knowing that human beings are susceptible to sexual temptation. Instead of telling people to love them, they are giving out the wrong signals, suggesting that they love their bodies. Would you wear expensive jewellery and walk along lonely streets at nights? Aren’t you tempting robbers? The irony is that we would not expose our jewellery for others to steal but we do not mind exposing our bodies to people!
How then can we find the capacity to love the other before self? It is for this reason that the fundamental message of Christian faith is the proclamation of God’s unconditional and prior love for us in His Son Jesus Christ who came to reveal and teach us the love of God. Jesus, who is truly human and divine, is the teacher of love. In His humanity, Jesus taught us how to love and be compassionate towards others. Jesus was a man totally for others. Jesus reminds us that true love is to put the interests and happiness of the other person first before ours. Indeed, as He remarked, “A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends.” Of course, what He has taught us, He lived it out Himself. Truly, “God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God’s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away.”
In the same vein as the incident in Cornelius’ conversion shows, God’s love knows no boundaries. This was what Peter discovered for he said, “The truth I have now come to realise, he said, is that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.” For if God has poured out the gift of the Holy Spirit on the pagans, and since they too were “speaking strange languages and proclaiming the greatness of God”, how could they continue to exclude the Gentiles from the Good News of salvation?
In the light of all that we have said, it is clear that we are called to love one another in the way Jesus loves us. Hence, he said, “This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you.” Indeed, we are called to love even to the extent of laying down our lives for our friends. He has set for us the example and we are called to follow suit.
This explains why a little while later, Jesus said, “You are my friends, if you do what I command you. I shall not call you servants any more, because a servant does not know his master’s business; I call you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.” Indeed, we are truly His friends only if we are one with Him in this way of love. We can be called His friends only because we too have come to understand and be convinced that unless we love others the way God loves us in Jesus, we cannot be said to have loved authentically.
It is true that we all know that God loves us in Jesus. But we need to experience this love anew today. Indeed, without a deep encounter with God’s overwhelming love, we cannot love genuinely and definitely not altruistically, that is, strangers, or better still our enemies. If we want to love, thenSt John tells us that we must first know God who is love. He writes, “My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.”
Indeed, this is the basis of love. We are called to bear fruits of love only because He has loved us first. For He said, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” It is through this same love we have received that we can be His emissaries of love. The love of Jesus for us entails a mission as well. Indeed, He said, “You did not choose me, no, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last.” Love is a mystery and an election. But we are not simply loved for ourselves alone. We are loved so that we can in turn bring others to the love of God. Love is never kept for oneself.
How can we speak of God’s love for us in Jesus, a love that is real and not simply an historical idea? Only the Holy Spirit who is the bond of love between the Father and the Son can connect us with the love of God in person today. This was the case of the Jewish Christians in the early Church. Initially, they were reluctant to share their faith beyond their community. But once we are renewed with the love of God in us, then touched by God’s love, all boundaries are removed. Indeed, Peter would never have done what he did if not for the Holy Spirit who is the bond of love. It was courageous of him to oblige the invitation of Cornelius to stay with him for some days, which would have been unthinkable earlier, since Jews were not allowed to socialize with the Gentiles lest they became ritually unclean. So the Holy Spirit not only opened the mind of Peter but also gave him the courage to break out against the narrow religious and cultural norms of his days and to act for love and in the name of love at the risk of his own reputation and safety.
However, it is not enough simply to be touched by His love. Many have been touched by the Lord and experienced His love but they have forgotten His love so easily. Hence, we must take heed of the words of Jesus when He said, “Remain in my love.” How can we remain in His love? “If you keep my commandments you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments.” To remain in His love, we must perform the acts of love. Love cannot simply be a nice feeling. Love must be continuously acted out daily in our lives. To remember His love, we must live out that love in our lives. The norm of love must be based on the gospel, or rather, Jesus Himself. Once we take the risk of loving we will find ourselves growing in the capacity to love.
Once we come to this realization, then we will be truly set free to love and find true happiness in life. This is the promise of Jesus, “I have told you this so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete.” Only when we love like Christ can we find love fulfilling.