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THE TRUE FRIENDS OF JESUS ARE THOSE WHO SHARE IN HIS VISION OF UNCONDITIONAL AND LIBE - stephenkhoo - 05-23-2014 11:44 AM
THE TRUE FRIENDS OF JESUS ARE THOSE WHO SHARE IN HIS VISION OF UNCONDITIONAL AND LIBERATING LOVE
SCRIPTURE READINGS: ACTS 15:22-31; JN 15:12-17
http://www.universalis.com/20140523mass.htm
I felt quite uncomfortable when I read today’s gospel text. I found it difficult to accept three things which Jesus said in this gospel. Firstly, how can love be a commandment? If love is a commandment, then love is no longer free; and if love is no longer free, it is no longer love. Indeed, we can never force a person to love. Love remains an invitation, never a commandment. Secondly, Jesus says that “there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” I do not think so. On the contrary, to lay down one’s life for someone you really love is quite an easy thing. However, to lay down one’s life for a stranger or worse still, our enemy, is a much more greater form of love. Thirdly, Jesus tells us that “if you do what I command you, I no longer speak of you as slaves … instead I call you friends.” This seems to be a conditional kind of love. It implies that we can be friends of Jesus only if we become subservient to His wishes. Indeed, to do what He commands us will make us slaves rather than friends.
But then these words of Jesus contradict His very life-style. For His whole life can be expressed as the unconditional love of the Father. And in fact that was the way He lived his life. Firstly, we know that Jesus never forced anyone to love; it has always remained an invitation. Secondly, we know that Jesus did not die for His friends as much as He died for all men, especially His enemies. Thirdly, Jesus never put conditions for love. He loves us as we are but always inviting us to go beyond ourselves. In fact, the first reading makes it very clear that true love is liberating. Even the early Church tried to limit the rules to the bare essentials.
So how can one resolve these difficulties? Firstly, it would be misleading for us to read these words of Jesus literally. Secondly, in order to understand these words of Jesus, we must realize that He was speaking to His intimate friends. We can get into the heart and mind of Jesus only when we have become His friends. Only within this framework can we begin to understand what Jesus really meant.
Firstly, when He said, “there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” He had actually gone beyond the stage of making distinctions between enemies and friends. All are His friends even His so-called enemies. His enemies might consider Jesus as their enemy, but Jesus has always considered them as His friends.
Secondly, the commandment to love is not a commandment at all. Rather it is an inner conviction based on our realization that we are called friends and brothers and sisters sharing the same Father. And this is the conviction of Jesus; that is why He said, “love one another as I have loved you.” Thirdly, what Jesus said is true, when we love out of conviction and realization that we are all one in God, then we are truly His friends. After all, a friend is not one who walks before or behind us but beside us. To share in His vision of unconditional love, therefore, makes us one with Jesus and therefore one with the Father as well.
Yes, unless we share this vision of unconditional and liberating love with Jesus, we cannot be His real witnesses in life. And we will not be able to bear much fruit either because our love becomes stifling and oppressive. But when we love like Jesus, we will always bear fruit. And not only that; whatever we ask from the Father will be given to us because we share the same mind, heart and vision of Jesus and the Father. What God wills is also our will. When that happens, love is complete both for ourselves and for others.
Written by The Most Rev William Goh