In today’s Gospel Jesus gives the disciples a new
commandment – to love one another. When we truly love one another, we are
experiencing something of the divine as love comes from God, love is God and
God is love. Surely Jesus’s command to
love one another was nothing new for the disciples and those of their time; the
commandment is well known in the Old Testament. But the love Jesus asks of the
disciples here (and of us) is to love as he has loved, and that is a controversial
love for some. It is controversial
because Jesus’s love is without restrictions and without exclusion. It is
a love of those we may not like, a love of
those it is hard to love. This love was too radical for some of the religious
leaders of Jesus’s time and ultimately led to his death. This radically
inclusive love is sometimes too much for Christians today also, to love the
sinner, to love those on the extreme margins of our society, to love those who
have hurt us, to welcome back those who have done wrong, to include all at the
table. Let us hear those words of the Gospel more clearly today: “love one another, just as I have loved you,
you must also love one another.” We can dream and work towards a world
where this is a reality.
“Let the Church always
be a place of mercy and hope, where everyone is welcome, loved and forgiven”
(Pope Francis)
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