by Father Robert M. Powers
A PASTOR PREACHED one Sunday on the importance of loving one another. The congregants loved his homily. They went back to Mass the next Sunday, full of anticipation of more inspiring words. But they were disappointed. He preached the same homily, telling the people that they must love one another. On subsequent Sundays, they heard the same message.
After a few months, parishioners wrote to the bishop. They did not disagree with their pastor. But were there not other messages they needed to hear as well? A diocesan official called the rectory and relayed the parishioners’ complaints. When the bishop’s assistant suggested that he might consider the parishioners’ petition, the pastor was unmoved. “When they respond to my words and love one another more, I’ll stop preaching the same homily,” he responded to the official. “When they get it right, I’ll preach on something else.”
This story highlights the essential mark of a disciple of Jesus Christ in today’s selection from St. John’s Gospel. Jesus gives His disciples a new commandment: Love one another. He tells them that this is how He wants His disciples to be primarily identified, as people of love. Throughout our history, at our best moments as a Church, our love for one another has been a powerful sign of authenticity. In the days of the early Church, which existed amid the pagan decadence of the Roman Empire, outsiders would comment with admiration, “See how these Christians love one another.” Many pagans yearned to join this uniquely loving family and sought baptism.
In many ordinary situations, the Church reveals herself as a community where love thrives. At an adult education class in my parish a few years back, a Protestant woman in her 40s commented at the end of the class that she had never experienced love anywhere as she had in the circle of caring Catholic friends she had made over the years in the neighborhood. When we Catholics exhibit love for one another, we draw others to the light of Christ.
While Jesus primarily focuses in today’s passage on love for one another, He also reminds His disciples of the source of that fraternal love. “Just as I have loved you,” He tells them, “you also must love one another.” It is important not to overlook this verse. Jesus’ new commandment to love one another is rooted in the two commandments under which He categorizes the entire moral life described by the law and the prophets.
When questioned by the scribes in Matthew’s Gospel about what is the greatest commandment, Jesus gives them two: The first is to love God with one’s heart, soul and mind. The second, He says, is similar: To love one’s neighbor as oneself. But in between those commandments, He states in Matthew 12, the first commandment is the greatest.
The order is of vital importance: Fraternal love flows out of love of God. In order to love one’s neighbor, love of God is essential. The primacy of God’s love as the source of interpersonal love is underscored multiple times as well in the First Letter of St. John.
In contemporary culture, secular people do not consider the first commandment obligatory for the moral life. They believe that the test of true morality is fidelity to the second commandment only. To discriminate against others because of race, religion, nationality, sex or sexual orientation is immoral, they say, and they promote a society that is inclusive of the values and gifts of every person.
These are valid principles gained in the last half-century of history, and they are worthy for us people of faith to support. But we should realize that without love of the Creator, love of the creature descends into a shallow political correctness, whereby unfashionable prejudices are shunned and bigotries that have no stigmas attached to them are allowed to thrive. For our love to be truly universal, or catholic, we need to be continually rooted in love of God.
Yet, even for people who sincerely profess faith, love of neighbor is an ongoing project. In his first letter, St. John is critical of any Christian who says he is in the light but hates his brother: “Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he … does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:11).
A regular examination of conscience with regard to love of neighbor is necessary in order to grow as a person of love. For centuries in the western world and up until recently, we were a Christian civilization where love and fear of God thrived, and where charity inspired by that love and fear of God abounded to a significant degree. But we were sadly a place where blindness to the evils listed above was quite common as well. Today we should not judge our forbears for their moral shortcomings but look within our own times, and particularly our own lives, and remove any blindspots that we find.
I never heard if that pastor ever changed his homily. But the new commandment of Jesus, that we love one another, always challenges us to respond with a renewed fidelity.
Readings for the Fifth Sunday of Easter
Acts 14: 21-27
Psalm 145: 8-9, 10-11, 12-13
Revelation 21: 1-5a
John 13: 31-33a, 34-35
Father Robert M. Powers is the administrator of St. Paul and St. Agnes parish, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Gowanus and the Columbia Street Waterfront District.
