Beloved, let us love one another
Saint John, beloved disciple of the Lord, in his old age wrote a letter, which is his last will. In this letter, he indicated what is most important. In fact, the entire letter speaks about one truth: God is love, and only the one who remains in love knows Him, and only this one can love. This is the only command the Lord leaves us with. Everything has its source in this commandment. Saint John makes a warm appeal to us: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God” (cf. 1 Jn 4:7)
It is so simple and yet so difficult to implement in our lives. Why? It seems very important to indicate what St. John wrote later in his letter. He explained that the love of God this way was revealed to us: “God sent his only-begotten Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.” (cf. 1 Jn 4:9-10)
Love has its order: God loved us first, our love is a response to His love, or rather to His mercy. To truly love, we must first experience this truth by ourselves. The greatest difficulty with love seems to be situated in our imaginations of it. We think that we know what love is, and we try to implement it according to the adopted patterns. We see love in the Christian sense primarily as a moral task. We need to love, be merciful, know how to give ourselves to people, etc. Of course, love is undoubtedly an obligation, it demands mercy, gestures of love towards others. But if it comes down to it, there is a fundamental weakness in it: the belief that love is from us. And this is not yet the love that the Lord Jesus speaks of. We remember from the Gospels that he said several times: This is my commandment: love one another as I love you (cf. Jn 15:12). Our love is not only to be modeled on His love, but it is simply to be His love. There is no other possibility, because love is from God, even more - God Himself is love (cf. 1 Jn 4: 7).
Love belongs entirely to God; it is His life. We are only disciples in the school of love. If it seems to us that we, by ourselves will realize love in our life, it will bear the mark of our weakness and we will not realize it.
We see many examples of not understanding the meaning of love in life. People who sincerely want to love, sometimes can hurt others severely, without realizing that what they consider love does not actually give the others what they need and can even destroy them. True love is humble, as St. Paul writes wonderfully in the hymn of love (see 1 Cor 13:1-13). Humility comes from the experience of unworthiness and, at the same time, from God's mercy. Saint Benedict reminds us very strongly: “Such people, fearful of the Lord, do not become presumptuous when they see that they are doing well. For they believe that even the good that is in them is not of their own power, but of the Lord. Seeing some good in ourselves, attribute it to God, not ourselves.”
All good, and therefore love above all, comes from God, it is not my merit! This hard-to-accept truth requires humility. But only when we have humility in ourselves, we can truly love, because the love that comes out of us then is not ours, but God's.
Today's Gospel seems to provide a picture of the action of love. The disciples rightly noticed that people lack bread, that they were hungry and weary. Humanly they were worried about it and even they took the initiative to remedy this situation. When Jesus said to them: Give them some food yourselves, they thought humanly: go and buy bread for two hundred denarii to give them to eat (cf. Mk 6:37). This they could do. But, the Lord Jesus instructs them to place people in groups, He blesses what they had and passes on to the disciples, and they were gave it to people. Thus, they feed everyone. The order, however, is as follows: He gives, and they are only transmitters. This is what happens during the Eucharist, the image of which is the miraculous multiplication of the bread. Priests are to give food to the people, not by their own power, but the food that Christ gives, and in fact He is who is giving. This is how it should be in all interpersonal relationships: we are to give to others the love that comes from God, which is specifically from the Holy Spirit, and actually is the giving of Christ in that Spirit. The invitation at the end of the Mass: “Go in the peace of Christ! ”is a call to go and carry Christ to others.
Until Tomorrow
fr. george