The Commandment of Love

The Commandment of Love

In the gospel, Christ gives His followers the mandate to love another just as He loved them.  Love becomes the transforming power of the lives of the early believers. Christ’s new commandment of love makes all things new.

Indeed, Christ’s example of love and sacrifice invites us to love beyond ourselves.  It is this kind of selfless and unconditional love which Christ has shown us that conquers sin and even death itself.  With this kind of love, death is transformed from the taking away of life into a voluntary return of the gift of life to the Giver of life.

Love reaches the eternal level when it goes beyond ourselves, when we are able to love others more than ourselves.  It is this kind of love that makes our human relationships last, transforming to eternity.   This kind of love outlives death, defeating death’s power over us.  Unconditional and selfless love is the real measure of Christian life. His kind of love is the reason for the resurrection.

Our love for one another has to be filled with the love that inspires the Eucharist, the living memorial of Christ’s love for us.   This re-enactment of Christ’s sacrifice in Calvary, which is the ultimate expression of His self-giving, inspires and empowers us to love as He does.  The love which Christ left as a legacy is the greatest of God’ gifts.

When we learn to love as Christ loves, we learn to believe and hope without seeing.   In one of his writings, St. Augustine once declared: “He (Christ) disappeared before our eyes, that we might find Him in our hearts.”  As we continue to deal with this pandemic, let us continue to discover the love that Christ has placed in our hearts.