Sixth Sunday of Easter

05-05-2024Weekly ReflectionFr. Stephen Yusko

“This is my commandment, that you love one another . . .” In our readings on this Sixth Sunday of Easter, we hear much about Our Lord’s commandment to love. Yet this seems a strange thing to modern ears: a commandment to love. For many in our society today believe that love is simply a feeling, an inclination caused in us by encountering someone or even something outside of us. And so, some may ask, “How can we be commanded to love?” More than this, though, even if we can will ourselves to love, what kind of love is Jesus commanding us to give?

Are we to love one another as one may love their favorite movie, or their favorite sport or their favorite drink? I think we all would agree that Jesus is not commanding us to love one another as one might love The Lord of the Rings, or the New York Yankees, or a smooth glass of Macallan. We love these things for the pleasure they give to us, not for the good we wish to give to them. We do not love them for their own sake, as if they were ourselves.

Okay, are we to love one another as we may love our pets? Though one may and likely should love his pet more than he loves that smooth glass of scotch, it would be wrong and disordered if he were to love it more than other people, especially his wife or his kids. Pets are not persons, and they are certainly not our children — even if our children sometimes act like our pets — and so, we ought not treat them as such. Consequently, Jesus is not commanding us to love one another as we love our pets, as this kind of love falls far short of the mark.

What about the love that we have for ourselves? Are we to love one another with this love? Given that Scripture gives this to us as the second greatest commandment, this must be our answer, and yet, many of us know that it is tragically possible for a person to hate his or herself. Consequently, there must be an even greater love than the love of self to which Jesus is calling us to love one another. What is this form of love?

Well, let’s listen to Jesus: “love one another as I have loved you.” Yes! We are to love one another with the same love with which Jesus loved us, and with which the Father loved Him. In other words, we are to love with the love of God. A love that is unselfish; a love that is disinterested; a love that looks outward toward the other; a love that understands that the person before you is made in the image and likeness of God, and so, should be loved, not used; cherished, not discarded; a love that asks what good can I give, rather than what good can I get. Every human being desires to be loved, yet every human being also desires to love. To pour oneself out for the other without counting the cost; to lose oneself in loving so as to find themselves in love, even to the point of loving to its most eminent degree — to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

We are to love one another with the love of God, then. A love that is supernatural, and that loves not only friends, but also those who have the potential of becoming our friends, that is, we are to love even our enemies. As Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44).

We have seen that we are to love one another with the love of God; however, our original question lingers: How can we be commanded to love? More specifically, how can we be commanded to love with a love that exceeds our natural capacities? Pope Benedict XVI helps us to answer this question when he states in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est that we can be commanded to love with God’s own love because it has first been given to us. As St. John tells us in our second reading: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins.”

You see, love is not merely a feeling, but is in the will. As such, no matter the situation or our emotional response to it, we can always will to love. As St. John of the Cross said, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.” More than this, though, as Christians, who have had the love of God “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom 5:5), we are now enabled by God’s grace to love as God loves, and thus, to fulfill the commandment of the New and Eternal Covenant, to “love one another, as I have loved you.” Such was the experience of St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Mother Teresa, Ven. Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, and the countless other witnesses of God’s love, and such can be your experience if you but ask for it and carry it out in your own lives.