St Thomas Aquinas teaches us that to love is to the will the good of the other (STh I-II, q.26 a.4,[Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut Philosophus dicit in II Rhetoric, amare est velle alicui bonum] CCC 1766). To love, then, is not simply an act of passion or emotion: something we feel, but something we choose to do. The commands to love God and our neighbour, found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, are central to the Christian Faith, as taught and exemplified by Our Lord. To choose someone else’s good reminds us that we do not exist for our own sake, and that our lives are lived in community and relationship with others. We are called to be loving and generous, just as God as been loving and generous towards us in Christ. We seek to cooperate with God in promoting human flourishing.
Jesus is quite explicit in this morning’s Gospel, ‘A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’ (John 13:34-35 ESV) We are to love each other as Jesus has loved us. We are to lay down our lives, as Christ has for us. In this love and service we can truly love each other. This makes who and what we are manifest to the world around us. It makes Christianity something attractive because people can see the difference it makes. We are people of love and a community of love, willing good, and helping to make it a reality. It is a radical and world-changing idea, underpinned by selfless love, which Christ commands of us, His Church, to help transform the world through His Grace that humanity might come to have life, life in all its fullness.
In the Acts of the Apostles we see St Peter realise that salvation is for Gentiles as well as Jews, that all are called to be baptized into Christ and receive His Holy Spirit. In the Book of Revelation we see God promise, ‘To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.’ Acts 21:6 ESV) God promises to quench our spiritual thirst, which nothing else can satisfy. John’s vision of the future explains why, in the Gospel, Christ states that He will only be with the disciples on earth a little while, and where He is Going they cannot come. They cannot go to the Cross, to reconcile God and humanity, nor can they yet go to Heaven, because Christ has not yet died, risen, and ascended. Because of what Christ has done, the New Creation is possible. Humanity can be united with God forever. We have a vision of a future without pain or suffering, because what is offered is unity with God, the fullness of human existence. This is the Christian hope of Heaven. Because of what Christ has done, and where He has gone, we can have this hope, through our baptism, by which we are saved.
These are not idealist pipe-dreams but the reason why we are Christians. Because we have a hope of heaven, we want to see a world transformed more and more into the likeness of Christ, into a place of peace, and joy, and love, to prepare us for the joys of heaven. Christ gives us this commandment so that we may have life and have it to the full, in and through Him, the source of all life and love.
This is what following Christ means in practice: living and dying like Christ, together, so that by this all will know that we are His disciples, through love lived out in our lives we proclaim the reality and the truth of our faith in Him. It’s something which we do together, and while it sounds easy in theory it is much harder in practice. We must try, and fail, and keep on trying. It is why we need to stay close to Christ in Word and Sacrament, to pray together, to support and forgive each other, so that we can live a life of love, not saccharin-sweet as the world sees it, but real, sacrificial love, the sort which has the power to transform the world so that it becomes more Christ-like. We thirst for this love, and only it can satisfy our deepest desires, so let us come, and drink of that living water, let us feast on Him who is the Living Bread and the True Vine, the Shepherd of our souls, who loves us so much that he died for us, and let us love Him and one another so that all the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever. Amen.
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