Gospel Reflection 2020/2021

St John [1 Jn 4:7-21] exhorts us that, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” In Christianity, we do not just believe that God’s very nature is love, but we believe that God is love.

As we are drawing close to the end of the liturgical year of the Church, Jesus is illuminating, summarising and perfecting the Old Testament Law and Prophets; He is giving us the greatest commandments of all – the Commandments of Love [Mark 12:29-30]:

"This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.

The second is this: You must love your neighbour as yourself.

There is no commandment greater than these."

Love thy God and love thy neighbour – it is easier said than done. Christian love must never be confused with the warm, cosy and fuzzy feeling of the romanticized love. Christian love is about the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the other. Our Lord Jesus [Jn 15: 13] tells us that “ No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

It is very hard to sacrifice ourselves for a deserving and righteous person [cf. Rm 5: 7]. And if we think dying for someone is hard enough, our Lord Jesus is not making life easier for any of us, “I say to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Matthew 5: 44-48]

Christian love is sacrificial. The litmus test for our love for God and for our neighbour is our willingness to sacrifice ourselves (and to die) for God and for others. How much are we willing to sacrifice for God and for others, or even for our enemies? Without sacrifice, our love is mere rhetoric and superficial.

Is such love attainable and sustainable? With God, everything is possible. And our Lord Jesus Christ has shown us the way of love; He has demonstrated to us the perfect example of agape love. Though He is God, He has humbled Himself to share in our humanity [Liturgy of the Eucharist]. Being one with us, one of us and one among us, He is the Eternal High Priest who offers Himself to God and dies for us on the cross while we are still sinners. He dies for us so that we might live. In the footsteps of our Lord, may we learn to love God and others more genuinely, more intensely and more selflessly.

Let our fervent prayer be:

“Lord Jesus, teach me to love more genuinely, more intensely and more selflessly.”