FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER "C"

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (3)

John 13, 31-35 “Love one another as I have loved you.”

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love.”

With wars and killings so common around the globe, the old refrain makes more sense than was probably intended when the words were written long ago. “Love makes the world go round,” says another. (Or is it money?) Whether it is movies or songs, love is the theme that constantly recurs. English literature almost hangs on it, from Shakespeare to modern novelists. And yet, statistically, with marriages breaking down at a great rate, there seems never to have been a greater need for such a scarce commodity as real love. There are lots of poor imitations of the real thing around. They go by the names of fornication, adultery, child abuse, prostitution. And all of them, falling short of what God intended love to be, have a price to pay. Such things do not build up the other person. They do not build community.

 Such evils only trivialise human relationships and treat the other as object, not as person. Wherever so-called love is self-centred or grasping or manipulative, it’s sure to fail.

“But you don’t understand, we love each other.” Love seems to be the over-all justification for anything arbitrary or sinful. Popular treatment of sex has slashed away the sense of sin not only in the minds of the young but also of the whole population in general. We may have rid ourselves of the narrow views of the past generation, but I think we have swung the other way in rejecting what the Church teaches on doctrinal and life issues. People say that the Church’s stand is too unbending and lacking in compassion to be taken seriously. They say that Jesus Christ is not to be taken as one who challenges us radically. They say that Jesus is to be taken as one who keeps saying: “Be not afraid,” “my yoke is easy,”  and “I’m meek and humble of heart.” So leave it all to cosy, comfy, fuzzy Jesus. They describe God as someone who forgives anything, even if one hasn’t the time and inclination to apologise. Some people have picked up the conviction that all moral strictures are arbitrary and must change from age to age. They probably were not told that sin and crime came before the moral strictures; that laws were written for people who can’t figure out for themselves what human being can legitimately do and not do; that it was evil for Cain to kill his brother Abel, even though the Ten Commandments hadn’t been published yet.

“But you don’t understand; we love each other.” To those who have had a long and painful experience of it, “love” is a pretty mercurial (shifty) label. It’s hard to be sure if it’s the right one. Love isn’t a feeling. Being-in-love is a feeling. Love is an act of the will to work for the good of the other.

 Love takes over when the feelings fail; when the beloved is even no longer likeable. Only through suffering can love emerge from being-in-love. If it doesn’t, it’s usually off to the divorce court. Real love is very ordinary: doing the daily chores love, putting out the garbage love, visiting the hospital love, cutting down on the drinking love. “By their fruits you will know them.”

In the short span of 33 years, Jesus Christ couldn’t exhaust all the possible avocations available to people. He wasn’t a farmer or philosophy or husband or lawyer. He was probably a woodworker, a stonecutter, a casual labourer, and certainly an excellent teacher. Jesus couldn’t take up all the professions or avocations. But he did something very special and unique: he went to the heart of every calling, the essence of every profession, and that was self-sacrificing love, self-sacrificing love unto death.

 Dear parents, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and there’s where you become like Jesus.

PRAYER: God, our Parent, you are love itself, and all our love comes from you. Our dearest Brother, Jesus, you showed your great love for us in laying down your life on the Cross. Forgives us our failures to love, and pour out your love into our hearts, to enable us love others as you love us.

Amen.