The Living Word

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Category: The Living Word

On Loving One Another

Scripture      John 13: 1, 31-33, 34-35

Reading       

  “Little children, I am with you only a little longer.

I give you a new commandment,

that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

By this everyone will know

that you are my disciples, if you have love one another.”

Reflection

This command:  “Love one another as I have loved you” follows immediately upon Jesus’ imperative to “Remain in My love”.  There is an inseparable bond linking these two activities – activities which must be continuous and simultaneous in every believer.  Remaining in My love, be loving to one another.  We simply love Love and let Love love through us.

 

This abiding love of God within us is not something purely mystical then, rather its enduring immanence is closely linked with the ethical command: “Love one another.”  Lovers of God are to be mystically-active, loving one anther.  The more one is receptive to the inflowing of God’s love within, the more the out-flowing, the overflowing love will be towards each other.  The more one is open to this remaining receptive in God’s love, the more one will be attentive to the demands of loving one another.

 

 

This abiding God’s love, agape is dynamic, creative, active, generative of more love, more agape.  This Love can subsist only if it produces more love.  Quite clearly then the source and the vitality of all our authentic “loving of one another”  is divine.  Love spirals outward from the very heart of the Trinity – from God who is Love.  “As the Father has loved Me, so I have loved you, and you, in this very same love, must  be loving one another.”  This loving one another will be a generous, merciful, divine love, an overflowing from the vital spring of God’s love within us.  It is the agape of God made visible.

 

Just how does this transpire within us?  We let Love love through us.  We allow Love to bind up all the forces of death in us; all those life and love-denying forces that keep us trapped and un-free.  We let Love bind up our pride, our greed, our lust, our selfishness and our fear. Love casts these into the abyss so that ...the overflowing love to the other is instead a love that is patient, kind, not boastful, conceited or resentful.  It is a loving one another that hardly ever notices the weakness and faults of the other; excuses their wrongdoings; easily forgives their sins and failures; and rejoices readily in their good.  This love of one another is always able to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes…and when this love is expressed in its utmost perfection, it spills forth in the giving of one’s life – in Christian martyrdom.  “Greater love than this no one has than one lay down one’s life for one’s friends”.  And, yes, you are my friends when you love one another like this!

 

 

Our love for one another will be evidenced by the extent, intensity and the greatness of God’s abiding love.  When it is great, so will our loving one another be great.   “Show me how much love there is among you and between you and I will tell you how much prayer there is.” (Thomas Merton) If you are remaining in My love, you will be loving one another. Loving one another flows naturally and spontaneously from one’s being loved in God. 

 

 

A community -  be it a family, a religious community or a solitude community -   each draws its unity from this divine love - agape.  No human, natural, affective love alone will ever be able to reach the heights, the length, the breadth and the depths of this agape love.  For all the beauty, strength and consolation than human love brings, it is never sufficient for our complete well being. When all of us become more conscious of being embraced in the community of the Trinity, the more easily we will embrace and welcome all the rich diversity and plurality of individual personalities in our human communities.  For no diversity, no interior strife, no sufferings, trials from within or without, not even their sin, not even their death, will be able to separate us from the love of Christ that has gathered us together as ONE and is sustaining us together as ONE.

 

 

 A community united in God’s Love – that remains loving the Beloved - will be loving towards one another. This will be the “sign” to the world pointing to a higher transcendent reality:

“See how they love one another.

See how they love the neighbor.

See how they pray to their God.”

 

 

Carrying Grace      I will celebrate the sacred 'covenant of love' between every person I encounter.    Namaste:  "The God in me greets the God in you."  

 

 

Comments  

#4 arletteh 2010-05-06 12:47
Those times that pierce our soul are times to cry out for Jesus to enter into the pain.Jesus is so attracted to our suffering and wants us to cry out for him to come in.We wait, for Jesus has already begun to transform the situation, and us."God is close to the broken hearted.Those whose spirit is crushed He will save"
#3 Betty Mellon 2010-05-04 17:17
The words of Jesus “Remain in my love” speaks eloquently at a profound depth for me. Some time after prayerfully reflecting on this week’s Sunday reading, the words that surge concerning Jesus’ mandate to love one another was, “I come in peace and love to all who come along my path.” Yet, this task remains challenging for me because situations arise which pierces my soul at times to love openly and freely. I seek always to love in the way of Jesus – amidst facing sudden upheavals in the day. Deeply amazing is the love connection of the Holy Trinity that instills in me a gentle flowing love which touches me and carries me to let love flow through me in loving all along the way.
#2 Mark Dickinson 2010-05-03 15:31
Can we be people of God without Love? What transformed the disciples, and the people whom Jesus met as he journeyed throughout Judea and Galilee, was [and is] his focus on love. Not a false love that carries conditions or boundaries or limitations. But the unbounded, unconditional, unrestricted Love of God. A love that consumes in entirety. It makes no distinction between race or colour, clean or unclean, Roman or Jew (or Jew or Samaritan). It is a love that teaches us to abandon prejudice, hatred, judgement, and bigotry.
Our "new love", patterned on the love of Jesus .. and mirroring the Love of God, is to reach outwards and onwards without restrictions. It is the love that is captured in the resurrection ... a love that brings a new beginning; a love that unites our humanity with God's divinity. It is the love of Jesus ... always present, always enriching, always teaching.
Let us live as lovers of God ... not loving for ourselves, but loving for one another.
#1 arletteh 2010-05-01 17:42
Yes,to return always to the love of Christ;to remain in his love.When situations seem impossible, when it seems there is no solution for a conflict,do I(we) stop to think "what would Jesus say"?Jesus would enter ever so gently,gently, because it is the only answer: "Little children, love one another." And the situation is resolved. We start from square one:"love one another," the first and the last word:"love one another"We may have to step back from the situation,to put ourselves back into the love of Christ,to know ,feel ourselves there, then to return with the one solution :"Love one another."No "ands, ',"ifs,"or "buts," just:"Love one another"Your word is a lamp to my feet.

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