Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Perhaps you are tired today and the weather has not helped us this past week. When it is cold and rainy it affects us so let us look to the Lord and his love will help us. The psalm helped me a lot this week, it says, “The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works.” The Lord is no respecter of persons. He is not good with some and not with others. No, never! He is good with all, what a marvel. How wonderful because he enters into all of us, no? If he enters you, he is good with all of us. He is compassionate with all his works, with all of us. He is gracious and merciful and shows us great kindness to all his creatures. You and I are creatures of God. He is affectionate with us. I hope this helps you brothers. I am lifted up by this psalm, it gives me new strength. I will praise your name forever and ever. I will bless the Lord at all times, at all times, because he is good to me.
The psalm gives us the key to today’s word. This psalmist’s song of knowing that God is good and kind that he his loving and merciful give us the strength to love, no? Otherwise, I could never love anyone. If I do not experience in my life that God is good, I would only be able to love myself. To love myself I don’t need God. We love each other very poorly most of the time. This is a key point today because Christ does not come demanding anything from us. He doesn’t say you have to love each other; he knows that we cannot. He knows that we cannot fulfill this gospel. Love one another as I have loved you, do you love like this? No, some are married for sixty years and have never loved like this and others with twenty years of marriage, have never loved your spouse like this, nor your children, nor your boss nor your mother-in-law.
You have never loved as God has loved you. How does he love you? We need to know how he loves us because he says, “as I have loved you.” He does not say only to love, but to love as I have loved you. And how has he loved you? He loved you when you were his enemy! When you are someone’s enemy no one loves you; they reject you. When you do evil, no one loves you. When you were rude or arrogant, when you are proud no one loved you. Is there someone here who loves a proud person? None of us can do so, but Christ loves a proud, an arrogant person, you and me!
Who can love a lustful man, the one who hits on women, always looking at them, let me know if you can love someone like this. Can you love a murderer, a rapist, an abuser, a homeless person, a drug addict? Can you love them? You can’t. The rich people give them a bottle of water and get them out of their sight. Who loves these people? Only God. You are that murderer, that lustful man, that street person who smells bad, a violent person and God loves you as you are. Then you can love the others as you have been loved.
Faith is for the poor, the weak ones, the sinner, like you and me. The poor one is one who has not felt loved rather he felt despised by everyone. He thinks he does everything wrong but when he encounters this love he converts. He is the only one who receives faith. He is the one that Christ has come for. Christ ate with publicans and sinners, thieves and prostitutes, the despised who were not worthy to enter the church or the temple or the synagogue. He was with the lame, the mute, those suffering from a flow of blood, the lepers, the blind; these are the one the Lord hangs out with.
He says to us to love one another as I have loved you. This gospel is not a requirement; it is a grace and only the one who has been loved in his weakness can love like this. It is a great commandment and a new one that the world does not know. It does not know love for the enemy. Jesus announced this love of the enemy after Judas left the Last Supper. Love as I have loved Judas, my enemy, who has handed me over to them. And thanks to him the Son of Man will be glorified. But Judas was not the only bad guy. All of them deserted Christ, except for John. They were all sycophants. But the Lord loved them when they were his enemies. Judas was an apostle, a chosen one, one who was sent. He went two by two with the others and had power to cast out demons, to cure the sick, to heal the lame, to raise the dead.
Judas lacked one very big experience that Peter and Thomas and the others had: the experience of the Risen Lord, of being with him after the resurrection. Peter saw the him resurrected only by the skin of his teeth, just in the nick of time. Judas did not see Christ resurrected. The only one who can love is the Risen Christ. Only the one who has an experience of the Risen Lord can love as Christ has loved us. For that reason, it is a new commandment. Something revolutionary has happened: no one has ever risen from the dead before. Christ rose never to die again. A Christian loves and never stops loving as we said the other day because Christ said this fruit of love will remain. If it does not remain, it is not love. If it is an effort to love, it will not remain. This is not a demand; it is a free gift. You can only love as Christ loved you, if you have first been loved by him.
When you look at your marriage or any other relationship you and I always wait for the other to love first, and then we will love him. It is the same with forgiveness. If he asks to be forgiven, then I will forgive him, but I will not take the lead. He was the evil one, so he has to ask first. In marriage there are two fools who are waiting for each other to say, “I love you.” And only Christ has broken this stalemate; he has broken this deep selfishness because he first loved us. Now there is no more excuses not to love the other.
He loves you with a great affection. He has blessed you a great deal. He has given you everything. And the greatest thing he has given you is his Son, Jesus Christ, in the Church, in the community. He has also given you the Holy Spirit who helps you. He has given you the forgiveness of sins, the body and his blood of his Son in the Eucharist, the preaching, the presbyters, the catechists, the brothers and sisters. He has given you everything, why? Because he loves you and why does he love you? St. Augustine said, he loved us in order to get us to love each other.