Fr. Michael Williams

The readings from St John today focus on the theme of love. In his gospel he reports Jesus’ own words: ‘This is my commandment: love one another, as I have loved you’; and in his first letter he writes: ‘let us love one another since love comes from God’. It’s believed that when St John the Evangelist was too feeble to write, or even to preach, he used to be carried into the assembly at Ephesus and he would always say the same thing: ‘My children love one another’. When asked ‘Why?’ he said: ‘Because it is the word of the Lord and if you keep it you do enough’.

Today the word love is bandied about so often in soap operas and celebrity TV shows, that it has lost much of its true meaning. To find the true meaning of love we need to discover it in the Sacred Scriptures St John reminds us in the Scriptures today that ‘God is love’. The God who is love, is Someone, who constantly gives. To give means to offer, to bestow, to donate. We can see that God is always doing this. It is His nature to do this: it is the nature of God to give. God has been doing this for all eternity. He has been giving Himself in love as a spiritual union of divine Persons- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So before God created anything ‘God is love’.

When Pope John Paul II wrote his biography, he called it ‘Gift and Mystery’, because he saw his life as a gift and a mystery. God’s love is manifested to us also by the fact that He gave us the gift of life, which is a gift of love; He also gives us the wonder and beauty of creation as a gift. Unfortunately, we don’t always appreciate the gifts God gives to us from His love. Nevertheless, God continues to love and to give. Having sinned, and abandoned the way of love, God did not abandon us for ‘He sent His Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away’. He continues to do this now, as Christ keeps coming to us in the Sacraments, in prayer, in His Word, in other people.

To learn something more of love we need to consult the Sacred Scriptures once again. In St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter thirteen, we find a definition of love. It says, ‘love is always patient and kind; love is never jealous, love is not boastful and conceited; it is never rude and never seeks it’s own advantage; it does not take offence or store up grievances. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but finds it joy in the truth. It is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes. Love never comes to an end’. God is all these things, and we see this manifested in the life of Jesus.

As Christians we are called to put this love into practice in our daily lives- at home, at work, at church. We don’t need to do anything spectacular, but we are called simply to love. St. Thérèse once said, “You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them”.

If we follow her advice we will be faithful to St John’s words, when he told his congregation: ‘My children love one another…Because it is the word of the Lord and if you keep it you do enough’.