Love one another as I love you.
Jesus said to his disciples: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
What else can be said about love? What else can be said about it in the context of these very words of Jesus? What else can be said about love, so as not to fall into such easy patterns, not to explain big things, so extremely simple? What to do to stop before this great mystery of love for a moment, and deeply bow to it?
What else can be said about love in these slightly strange times when more and more people seem to be departing from love? What else can be said about love now, at this time of such strange confusion?
What is love? First, perhaps some sort of coming out of ourselves; some moment of leaving ourselves. One must really be able to abandon the old patterns. We must be able to free ourselves from what is deeply embedded somewhere in our way of thinking and in our actions. Love is just such a special abandonment of oneself, an exit from oneself. The point is that I should be able to look at the world with different eyes, that the world would cease to be just such a place of my own success. The point is that I should be able to look at the world a little wider, seeing in another human being a brother, not a wolf. To love is to go out of myself, so to have a little more open ears, so that in this world around me I hear not only voices, but also a human cry: for closeness, for help, for friendship.
What is love? It is just such an attempt to see in the world this great mystery of God's presence. If I am not able to do this, if I do not try to look at the world a little wider, I will not see God on the streets of cities; then I will not see that God can come closer to me in every person, in every word I hear; if I do not look at the world in this way, it will become for me only a hideout of the devil who rules in this world. But it is not so; and yet there is Someone who has overcome the world with the power of love; and yet there is Someone who said to me that "from now on there is neither sin, nor weakness, nor death." To love is to be able to see the world with different eyes, and to try - sometimes against oneself, maybe against the circumstances - to see the mystery of brotherhood in the world.
When I love, I begin to listen to St. Paul, who glorifies love and its greatness, its power. When I love, I listen to St. Paul, who says: "Bear one another's burdens," and be able to be silent sometimes, to calm down - at least for a moment - in order to understand that brothers who live next to me, people who need help, to whom I need to extend my hand.
When I love, I begin to understand that the kingdom of God is in our midst, and that we - and no one else - either we make the kingdom of God grow or we decline it.
What else is there to say about love today, in these strange times? When it seems that there are less and less people trying to see in the world "a little more" than the things that surround them. What else to say? Well, probably just like that: to realize that the one who does not love has already died.
"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I love you." How desperately we need such deep love today; we should hurry to love people, because if we do not want to, we will all bite each other soon.
One more thought
This calling to Love - spelled out in the twenty Greek words of the original text - is based around the term agápe, "love," which will be the golden thread that binds the bends of Christ's long evening speech. The sentence quoted by us is guided by two ideals. The first is an example that exemplifies the love expected of a disciple of Jesus. Indeed, the Old Testament already required - and it was an exhortation strong enough for Christ to embrace it in his public teaching - to love "your neighbor as yourself" (Lev 19:18). It is a radical commitment born out of a spontaneous instinct that protects our inner and outer being.
However, in the words of Jesus there is a novelty: not "as myself", but "as I love you", that is, the full dedication of the Son of God, which is an invitation to a love as perfect as God's own love ("Be [...] perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect ", Jesus said already in Mt 5:48). This is the second ideal that is intertwined with the first: genuine Christian love must be absolute, ready to cross the threshold of ultimate self-giving. For example, the thought goes to the mother who, in the face of the threat to her child's life, does not hesitate to put her own life in danger, forgetting about her love for herself, which is great. However, Christ's love is greater. On the evening of Holy Thursday, it floated under the vault of the Cenacle, and several hours later it appeared on the Mount of Executions, known in Aramaic as Golgotha, in Latin as Calvary, that is, the Skull.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george